Louisiana Saturday Nights is a collection of poetry and accompanying critical introduction written for the doctorate in Literature and Creative Writing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-130).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO, 2007. / Abstract. Includes annotated bibliographical references (leaves 205-211).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2008. / Description based on contents viewed July 8, 2009; title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-81).

M.A. / Young adults who are entering the world of work are facing increasing challenges, resulting in elevated levels of employment uncertainty and anxiety. Many of these challenges are due to the continuously changing work environment, which is buffeted by the socio-political and economic climate - both in and outside South Africa. Other challenges could be related to factors such as lack of confidence, decision making difficulties, dissatisfaction with career choice and difficulties with social networking. As a result of such challenges young adults may perceive career barriers that would have an impact on their career development. These challenges could be influenced by an individual’s personality traits. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the career barriers most perceived by young adults. The study also aimed to assess whether any relationship exists between personality traits and perceived career barriers. The sample consisted of 193 participants from two universities in South Africa. Each participant completed a biographical data questionnaire, the Basic Traits Inventory- Short Form and the Career Barriers Inventory-Revised. The three highest standardised mean scores for the perceived career barrier scales were Racial Discrimination (M = 4.90), Dissatisfaction with Career (M = 4.56) and Sex Discrimination (M = 4.49). Examination of the individual personality traits in relation to perceived career barriers was done through the use of Pearson’s product-moment correlations. Extroversion yielded statistically significant negative correlations with the following perceived career barriers: Decision–Making Difficulties (r = -0.241; p < 0.01) and Inadequate Preparation (r = -0.149; p < 0.05). Conscientiousness showed a statistically significant positive relationship with Sex Discrimination (r = 0.274; p < 0.01). The results also indicated a statistically significant positive correlation between Agreeableness and Job Market Constraints (r = 0.166; p < 0.05). This study has implications for career guidance counsellors in their endeavours to provide a comprehensive service to young adults who have difficulties overcoming perceived career barriers.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur 18–19-åringar värderar karriär. Detta görs utifrån de tre begreppen; autenticitet, balans och utmaning och det mångriktade karriärbegreppet. För att kartlägga och förstå värderingen av karriär används en kvantitativ och en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod. Urvalsgruppen är gymnasieelever i södra Sverige. Studien bidrar till karriärforskning i svensk kontext och bland unga som är på väg in på arbetsmarknaden, vilket inte i stor utsträckning har undersökts tidigare. Begreppen autenticitet, balans och utmaning i KCM var relevanta för urvalsgruppen, där autenticitet värderas högst. Studien presenterar nya infallsvinklar som nyanserar 18-19-åringars värdering av karriär i förhållande till KCM. Studien visar att 18–19-åringars definition av karriär är i linje det mångriktade karriärbegreppet. / The purpose of this study is to examine how 18-19-year-olds assess career based on three parameters, authenticity, balance and challenge, and the protean career concept. To identify and understand the assessment of career quantitative and qualitative research methods are used. The sample are high school students in southern Sweden. The study contributes to career research in a Swedish context and among young adults who are about to enter the labor market, which has not been examined to a large extent. The concepts authenticity, balance and challenge in KCM were relevant to the sample, and authenticity was valued most highly. The study contributes with new approaches to 18-19-year-olds assessment of career in relation to KCM. The study shows that 18-19-year-olds’ definition of career is similar with the protean career concept.

In this study it is argued that quality of health is predominantly influenced by health behaviour and health-risk behaviour. Self-regulation as an important factor in health and health-risk behaviour was operationalised by three phases, namely goal establishment, goal execution and self-reflection and adjustment. In addition, mindfulness is an important metacognitive skill applied throughout the process of self-regulation. The lack of research on self-regulation and health behaviour, especially with reference to South African youth and young adolescents is surprising. Health programmes seem to pay insufficient attention to the enhancement of self-regulatory skills in preventing health risk behaviour. Another limitation is the lack of qualitative data regarding self-regulation research. 'This study aims to explore the self-regulation of health-related goals in a group of young adults. Insight to this process could contribute to the development of more appropriate health promoting programmes. A qualitative research design with content analysis as data analysis technique was applied. An availability sample of 92 participants, aged between 18 and 30, completed self-compiled questionnaires on health-risk behaviour and self-regulation. Results indicate a high prevalence of health risk behaviour, supporting other South African findings. Various differences were found between participants engaging in high risk behaviour and those with low risk behaviour with reference to the phases and processes of self-regulation. The high risk group's goal setting seems to be problematic as it does not address identified high risk behaviours. This may be as a result of insufficient mindfulness in that they are ignorant of their health risk behaviour and its implication or alternatively, that they attempt to avoid the risk of failure. In addition, the high risk group is more dependent on external motivation regarding health-related goals and is, therefore, more influenced by controlled regulation. In contrast, the low risk group more often relies on individual personal resources as a source of motivation for their health related goals. Furthermore, the high risk group experiences regulatory non-fit as 'their actions were more often inappropriate. No major differences were found between the groups concerning stumbling blocks and self-observation. Participants in the high risk group evaluate their performance less favourably and are more likely to experience negative emotions in the face of failure compared to participants in the low risk group. When taking the whole self-regulation process into account, it can thus be concluded that participants of the high risk group have poor self-regulation in relation to participants in the low risk group. In general, the findings of this study support the findings of other researchers, confirming the importance of self-regulation in health and health-risk behaviour. The main implication is that there should be a much stronger emphasis on self-regulatory skills in health promotion and illness prevention programmes. Certain limitations of this study were also taken into account. Future studies should consider the role of individuals' risk perceptions with regard to the goal establishment phases as well as the manner in which individuals deal with stumbling blocks in the action phase. Finally, the way in which self-regulation as a dynamic process should be accurately assessed is still not clear. As this study is one of the first to explore self-regulation from a qualitative perspective, future studies could shed more light on the usefulness of other qualitative and even mixed method designs. / Thesis (M.A. (Clinical Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Young adults from a divorced home background (N = 125) were compared with a control group matched by sex and age (N = 125) on the scores obtained from the IPAT Anxiety Scale and the Mosher Incomplete Sentences Test.

Over half of all lifetime mental health disorders emerge during early adulthood and is associated with many adverse outcomes including: lower educational achievement, substance misuse and premature death. Despite the prevalence and burden of mental health problems, young adults with mental health needs are the least likely to seek professional help. This study aimed to gain a better understanding of help-seeking among young adults aged 18-25 and aimed to identify the factors that can delay or prevent access to mental health support. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected from young adults in the community using an anonymous online survey. The results of the study showed that approximately a third of participants did not seek any help for an emotional or mental health difficulty and of those who sought help the majority had accessed help from their friends or their GP. Intention to seek professional help was significantly association with satisfaction from services and perceived stigma, however psychological distress revealed a non-significant relationship. Thematic analysis revealed that stigmatising beliefs, perceiving the problem as not serious, a preference for self-reliance and difficulty in accessing help or communicating concerns were common barrier themes. Facilitator themes highlighted the importance of having a flexible and confidential service. The clinical implications of the results are discussed as well as consideration for future research.

This dissertation is a sociolinguistic investigation into the system of the speech act of complimenting among young Japanese. Sociolinguistic studies on complimenting have been rather extensively carried out in Western academic discourse since the 1980s. The rapid development of this field went hand in hand with the existing growing body of work on speech acts, linguistic politeness and language and gender studies, all fields which came to flourish during the 1960s-80s. The speech act of complimenting has so far been overwhelmingly regarded as one of the most obvious positive politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson 1987; Holmes 1995) and also as a feminised sociolinguistic practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 2003; Herbert 1990). However, the sociolinguistic examination of complimenting in non- Western speech communities remains less well investigated. This dissertation challenges some traditional premises about the nature of this speech act and explores how sociolinguists should go about analysing this variable in the context of a non-Western speech community. In so doing, I highlight that applying localized cultural knowledge plays a crucial role in unfolding the social and linguistic systems of complimenting in a Japanese speech community. The analysis presented here draws on a corpus consisting of more than 40 hours of recordings with 67 young Japanese university students, collected through ethnographic techniques. Fieldwork was conducted for over a year in order to obtain these data in southern Japan (namely, Kumamoto and Oita prefectures). A total of 369 compliment utterances within 143 compliment sequences were extracted and transcribed from this corpus. To achieve a satisfying sociolinguistic understanding of this speech act, the data are analysed with a combination of both the qualitative methods of discourse analysis and the quantitative methods of variationist sociolinguistics. This dissertation brings much needed discussions of this variable situated within non-Western contexts and hence makes significant contribution to the field, by adding new perspectives and findings about complimenting behaviour. On the one hand, my work found some regularity in compliments which parallel the findings of previous studies. This itself is a new insight in the field of compliments studies, namely, that there are crossculturally (if not universally) pervasive properties of complimenting. On the other hand, this study highlighted some originality in this speech act among the young Japanese. The construction and application of compliments in the case of Japanese substantially manifest its complex and intricate sociolinguistic system, which my dissertation is dedicated to describing through the naturally occurring data of spoken Japanese.