The years from the late teens through the twenties increasingly have become an important area of study. The age range between 18 and 25 makes up a new, distinct developmental period that is referred to as “emerging adulthood.” Recent work has suggested that individuals engage in their most extensive identity exploration during emerging adulthood. This study uses autoethnography and narrative biographical material to study emerging adulthood in the contexts of spiritual and personal growth. The study explored adult development among young women serving abroad as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The sample consisted of five women, including myself, all of whom shared similar background characteristics and served in the same mission. Interviews were conducted in which participants gave a unique description of their LDS mission experiences while responding to open-ended questions. Data analysis was done by gathering participants’ stories and then “restory (ing)” them into a framework that made sense. Stories presented here were based on the primary themes identified in participant interviews and my own experiences. These themes included: it was the right decision to serve a mission, development happened through experiencing adversity and through positive experiences, the mission lifestyle either helped or deterred participants’ growth and development, and the participants are who they are today because of this experience. Future longitudinal research could focus on how a mission has affected women’s lives throughout adulthood, or on the relationship between exposure to other cultures and individual psychosocial development.

The family law system effectuates case outcomes affecting the lives of parents, children, and society through court orders imposing important life decisions upon divorcing or unmarried parents, children, and post divorce families. While some cases are resolved in alternative dispute resolution forums, others enter the courtroom and judicial decisions cause unintended consequences for millions of adults and children each year. This research details a parent’s suboptimal family law system experience caused by judicial decision-making, highlighting the need to examine the causes of unintended systemic outcomes. The purpose of this research is to raise awareness and provide justification for systemic reform to prevent unintended consequences of court ordered outcomes caused by underlying structural violence. Conflicting objectives of litigants and problem solvers are investigated to determine the causes of systemic failures so recommendations for improved outcomes can be formulated. Theories of justice, civil rights, public policy, systems, structural violence, and nonviolence are integral components of this research. Applied theory in the context of the researcher’s experience highlights the need to address this social system issue while demonstrating the system intended to resolve disputes actually exacerbates conflict, resulting in more disputes. This research contributes to the literature because many litigants are unable to share their stories due to their oppressed condition within the system. This autoethnography documents the effects of a social system for conflict management gone awry and establishes a foundation to promote dialogue in support of a new way to manage disputes that is conducive to conflict resolution instead of conflict escalation.

Family therapy researchers have conducted a variety of studies of brief approaches to family therapy (e.g., MRI, Solution Focused, Strategic). However, despite the fact that Milton Erickson’s approach to hypnosis and psychotherapy was a significant influence on these models, few family therapy researchers have studied Ericksonian hypnosis directly. Hypnosis is a way of communicating with the body to elicit psychological and physiological responses that are not organized by conscious awareness (Erickson, 1980i). Hypnosis becomes hypnotherapy when the context and the participants are oriented toward therapeutic change (Flemons, 2002). Employing the methodology of autoethnography (Ellis & Bochner, 2016) and using Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) (Kagan, Krathwohl, & Miller, 1963) to conduct process research, the author explored the experience and understanding of both an Erickson-inspired hypnotherapist, Dr. Eric Greenleaf, and a client (herself) during a hypnotherapy session focused on addressing the issue of anxiety. Informed by what Bruner (1986) called a narrative mode of constructing the world, the author presents a narrative account of what transpired. Her analysis distinguishes six hypnotic holons—parts of a whole that are themselves wholes (Koestler, 1967)—that illuminate the co-creative nature of the hypnotherapeutic experience. Each holon indicates a particular kind of invitation extended by the hypnotherapist, the client’s response to that invitation, and what comes out of the interaction. The author also illuminates the particular qualities that the hypnotherapist brought to the interaction and discusses implications of the study for clinicians and researchers.

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Video games are a unique form of media in that they can persuade through interactivity. This thesis examines two categorical modes of video game interactivity, kinesthetic mechanics and non-kinesthetic mechanics, to suggest ways in which kinesthetic mechanics are more persuasive than non-kinesthetic mechanics. Video game mechanics are rules by which the game is played, and kinesthetics refers to non-trivial, time and space sensitive, dexterous inputs. This thesis utilizes methods of discourse analysis and autoethnographic personal narrative to look for five rhetorical methods that are utilized by game developers and experienced by players. This process suggests correlations between developer intention, user community experience, and my own gameplay experience. These rhetorical methods are: immersion and self-presence, kinesthetic resonance, narrative persuasion, affordance and enthymeme, and self-determination theory (SDT) motivation. These rhetorical methods can be found in most contemporary video games and are utilized to get players to engage with a game and elaborate on the themes and messages therein. I hypothesize that each of these methods is more persuasive through kinesthetic mechanics and compare and contrast experiences with a game that has kinesthetic mechanics and a game that has non-kinesthetic mechanics to test my hypotheses. My findings suggest that kinesthetic mechanics can prove to be more persuasive through certain rhetorical methods, however, more data could be helpful particularly where community experience is concerned. I conclude with recommended methods and considerations for future research. / Media Studies & Production / This thesis contains supplemental material that was not uploaded due to copyright restrictions. If you need to access the material, please contact the author directly.

This study aims to understand the experience of a non-White family trying to adopt a transracial child. ‘Transracial adoption’ is defined as a family adopting a child from a different race than theirs. My overarching focus is on how society comes to understand transracial adoption as a one-way transfer of minority children into White families, however, when the roles are reversed there is a lack of acceptance for minority families adopting transracially – specifically, when the adoptive child is White. The purpose of my study is to share my mine and mother’s life experience of fostering, social workers, child welfare and adoption so that minorities who are looking to adopt transracially may use mine and/or my mother’s life experience to help guide their adoption process if they feel they are being discriminated against. This study will also explore motivations, values, ethics and possible biases regarding transracial adoptions. Highlighting the contradictions that exist in transracial adoption practices I will use my own research as a platform for awareness of how social work practice can influence the lives of minorities who would like to adopt transracially, and for the need at both a macro and micro to create clearer transracial adoption policies for minority and White families. / Thesis / Master of Social Welfare (MSW)

Denna studie undersöker hur ’känsla av plats’, betraktat som menings- och anknytningsskapande till plats, påverkar individuellt och allmänt mentalt välbefinnande. Genom appliceringen av förkroppsligad autoetnografi syftar den till att skildra ett personligt narrativ om egna upplevelser från att gå på gatorna i Stockholms innerstad. Forskningsfrågan är: V ad kan ett autoetnografiskt och förkroppsligat tillvägagångssätt bidra till framväxande teorier och metoder som berör sambandet mellan känsla av plats och mentalt välbefinnande? Från det explorativa tillvägagångssättet presenteras några påståenden framåt slutet baserat på resultaten. För det första är det viktigt för utövare, teoretiker och medborgare att utforska platsbetydelser som en del av och i platsen, för att utveckla förståelse och ifrågasätta sociokulturella konstruktioner av att veta och leva. För det andra är det ett etiskt imperativ att vara uppmärksam på affekter och känslor i relation till plats, där ett ökat intresse från de som jobbar med offentliga miljöer behövs. För det tredje består meningsfulla platser av invecklade nätverk av jaget, andra och miljöer, vilket belyser hur miljön sällan har företräde i sig själv. Slutligen visar det autoetnografiska och förkroppsligade tillvägagångssättet på potential för förändring bortom fantasin, där känslighet kan öppna länge stängda dörrar och välkomna något nytt. Resultaten och reflektionerna antyder gemensamt att den inneboende komplexiteten i förhållandet måste bemötas med flexibilitet och öppenhet, snarare än att reduceras och separeras i fraktioner. / This study explores how sense of place, viewed as the attribution of meaning and emotional attachment to place, influences individual and public mental wellbeing. It is performed through a practice of embodied autoethnography, which seeks to portray a vulnerable narrative of the researcher herself in relation to walking the streets of inner-city Stockholm. The research question is: What can an autoethnographic and embodied approach contribute to emerging theories and practices concerned with the relationship between sense of place and mental wellbeing? From the explorative approach applied, some tentative prompts and claims are made towards the finishing chapters. First, it is vital for practitioners, theorists, and citizens to explore place meanings first-hand, to further understand and question socio-cultural constructions of knowing and living. Second, it is an ethical imperative to pay attention to affects, feelings, and emotions in place, in which heightened acknowledgement is needed for all concerned with ordering public spheres. Third, meanings of place consist of intricate networks of self, others, and environments, highlighting how the environment rarely takes precedence in or for itself. Finally, the autoethnographic and embodied approach to study recognizes the potential for change beyond imagination, in which vulnerability can open long-shut doors and welcome the becoming of something new. The findings and reflections jointly suggest the complexities must be met plurally rather than reduced and separated into fractions.

<p>     Organizations communicate messages to users of their physical spaces via artifacts and features that compose the spaces. I argue that these infrastructural messages are invitations to users to identify with the organization. I argue further that an individual’s experience of these messages—via user experience—may (or may not) evoke a sense of belonging. In order to explore what it looks like for a user to feel like they (do not) belong, this autoethnographic study explores the different infrastructural messages within the public bathrooms of 70 buildings on Purdue University’s main campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. </p> <p>     The main research question for this study is: how do public bathrooms, as a part of the physical infrastructure of an organization, communicate belonging through user experience in them? To explore this question, concepts of identification, belonging, physical space, and time were important to explicate. Identification looks at what it means to identify with an organization and ways that individuals have been invited to identify with the organization by the organization. This study further examines how one feels about an organization that they identify with by looking at one’s sense of belonging to a space. Consideration of space brought considerations about affordances, user experience, and hostile architecture. Finally, an exploration of time aided this work in developing a means by which to investigate the relationship between measured and perceived time when navigating physical space under distress. </p> <p>     This autoethnography offers a deep perspective of one user’s (my) experience within the bathrooms. Additionally, this work employed the use of land surveying from landscape archaeology (e.g., examination of constituent parts of the bathrooms), user experience field notes (e.g., collection of unique aspects of each bathroom as well as detailed experience reflections), and a unique methodological tool for collecting and comparing measured and perceived time. </p> <p>     Analysis of data collected based on a combination of these methods showed that how—beyond available affordances and barriers—the bathroom is used by an organizational member holds importance. Spatial design and navigational artifacts which can reduce the measured time for locating a bathroom are noticeable relative to the user’s experience of time (i.e., perceived time) to a point. However, when the user’s perception of time becomes less reliable, perceived distress seems to be the main feature coloring this experience. Therefore, spaces which challenge users physically and emotionally are not likely to be received as an invitation to members’ identification with that organization. Such messages impacted members’ sense of belonging to the organization. Further, through land surveying data of the artifacts and features of bathrooms combined with secondary data on building ages, this study assessed the University’s assumptions about the different type of bodies and needs that are present among their organizational members.</p> <p>     Theoretically, this work contributes a conceptual framework for belonging, fieldwork at the intersection of space and belonging, and a fat body taking up space within the literature. Methodologically, this work provides an innovative way of documenting time, a look at self-accommodation in research for scholars with disabilities, a demonstration of the use of embodied measurement, and a critique for user-centered and participatory design. In sum, this study illuminates what it was like for one fat body to try to meet her needs and reflect on how this impacted her sense of belonging to the University. This work has implications for further development of public bathrooms locally on Purdue’s campus as well as for scholarly inquiry about the relationships among organizational identification, belonging, user experience, and design of spaces. </p>

The subject of this autoethnography is the self-reflection of my own media experience, which I experience daily with a smartphone. The aim of the work is to discover my intimate and individual media experience with the most used technology and to see how this professional self-reflection can lead to the development of media literacy. Current times and society are changing ever more rapidly due to technological developments, which is why we need to adapt to these changes individually throughout our lives. The first part of the thesis thus describes theoretical basis concerning media literacy and self-reflection in the context of post-modern times, the current approach to media education, the concept of dynamic lifelong learning and the new, transformative competences needed for a happy life in the 21st century. The second part of the thesis explains the qualitative methodological process of autoethnography and data collection, which took place over six months through a self-reflective journal. The final part of the work uncovers thematic categories gained from the data set, in which I deconstructed that a smartphone means for me above all security, health, ambivalence, self-fulfilment, but overall the satisfaction of these needs. I noticed that I changed the way of thinking, my opinions, behaviour, emotions,...