The perception of and actual ability to control emotional responses during stressful, taxing situations are important to an individual’s well-being. Studies have shown that both low perceived control and a low actual ability for emotional control are related to internalizing and externalizing problems in youth. However, significant gaps in research exist in terms of testing theoretical predictions about how perceived and actual emotional control are associated with anxiety and aggressive behavior problems, particularly among adolescents. The first goal of this study was to examine two objective measures of actual control (i.e., vagal tone and vagal regulation) and their link with anxiety and aggressive behavior problems in youth ages 11-17 years. The second goal was to examine individual differences in youths’ ability to voluntarily control their heart rate and its association with youths’ perceived control and/or anxiety and aggressive behavior. The final goal was to expand upon Scott and Weems’ (2010) recent work by testing an adapted model of control using these two measures of actual emotional control. Eighty youth (aged 11-17 years; 51% female; 37.5% African American) and their primary caregivers participated in this study. Youth completed a physiological assessment in which they watched a relaxing video, rested quietly, increased and decreased their heart rate, and performed a mildly challenging cognitive task while their heart rate, skin conductance and body temperature were measured. Youth and their caregivers also completed questionnaires measuring youths’ anxiety, aggression, and perceived control. The results indicated that resting vagal tone (i.e., high frequency – heart rate variability) was negatively associated with anxiety symptoms (and perceived anxiety control) in this adolescent sample but not aggression. Conversely, anxiety (child-reported) and aggression (parent-reported) were both associated with a maladaptive vagal augmentation in response to a challenging cognitive task. The findings also suggested there were individual differences in youths’ heart rate control (but were better at increasing it) and that less change in increasing heart rate was related to more child-reported anxiety symptoms. However, the results did not provide support for differential of prediction of anxiety symptoms versus aggressive behavior problems between control profiles.

As the Internet becomes the major information infrastructure in most sectors, the importance of Information Systems (IS) security steadily increases. While reaching a certain level of actual IS security is vital for most businesses, this level must also be perceived as acceptable by stakeholders. Businesses have to maintain a certain level of security and be able to assess the level of other actors’ security. IS security is abstract and complex, however, and difficult to estimate and measure. This thesis uses epistemic and ontological frameworks to study the conceptual nature of IS security and separate the concepts of actual and perceived IS security. A well-known event is used to illustrate the conceptual discussion: the Sasser worm that was spread around the world in 2004. This study also includes a smaller case study from the City of Stockholm, where about 4,000 computers were infected by Sasser. The outcome of the study is that actual IS security should be treated as a dynamic condition that is influenced by three different objects: information assets, threat objects and security mechanisms. Incidents are processes that are ruled by the conditions of these three objects and affect the states of confidentiality, integrity and availability of information assets. The concepts of threat, risk and trust remain at epistemic level, i.e. perceptions. Perceptions of IS security can differ depending on their social establishment and are classified as subjective judgements, inter-subjective judgements or institutional facts. While actual IS security conditions can influence actors’ perceptions of IS security, perceived IS security can also influence actual IS security.