Taking a positive psychology approach, this research looked at a little-studied subset of working women and men - those who experienced changes affecting their work and self-reported as handling them well. The primary purpose was to explore what strategies they employed that helped them handle change well, what hindered doing well, and whether there were things that would have been helpful but were unavailable. There were two secondary purposes: (1) to gain insight into the nature of the changes they had faced, the impacts of those changes, whether they had always handled change well, and if not, when that changed and why; and (2) to explore whether the research interview itself had an impact on participants. This was primarily a qualitative, exploratory study that used the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) (Flanagan, 1954) to elicit helping and hindering critical incidents and wish list items; and open-ended interview questions (Cozby, 1997; Palys, 1997) to gather information about participants' experiences of change. A quantitative component was embedded in the form of a pre- and post-interview scaling question (Palys, 1997) to determine if the interview had an impact. Data from the CIT portion of the study elicited ten helping, hindering and wish list categories: (1) Personal Attitudes/Traits/Emotional Set; (2) Support from Friends and Family; (3) Internal Framework and Boundaries; (4) Taking Action; (5) Self-care; (6) Support from Professionals; (7) Management Style and Work Environment; (8) Skill/Role Competence; (9) Support from Work Colleagues; and (10) Personal Life Changes/Issues, suggesting strategies can be employed that facilitate handling change well. Data from the quantitative portion resulted in a borderline large effect size, suggesting the interview had an impact on participants. Surprisingly, results from participants' stories of change and its impacts strongly paralleled results of studies in the unemployment, transition, burnout, and posttraumatic growth literature, suggesting this sample of workers was dealing with chaotic environments in many domains of their lives and even though they self-reported as doing well with the changes they were facing, there was a cost involved. Implications for workers, counsellors, vocational psychologists, career counsellors, human resource professionals, organizations, and future research and theory are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to understand the meaning of change through therapeutic enactment in psychodrama. Existential and hermeneutic phenomenology conducted from the perspective of a dialectic between storied narrative and thematic analysis was used to investigate the essential meaning of the experience. Eight co-researchers who had experienced significant change through therapeutic enactment in psychodrama were interviewed in depth. Transcripts from these interviews were transposed into narrative form in order to straighten the story of change through enactment in a before, during, and after sequence. These eight individual narratives were validated by the co-researchers. An independent reviewer checked each narrative against the original transcript, video tapes of the enactments, and comments of each co-researcher for trustworthiness. Each validated narrative provided a rich description of the lived experience of change through therapeutic enactment. In addition, fifty-nine (59) essential themes were formulated from the individual narratives: Fourteen (14) in the planning stage, twenty-four (24) in the enactive stage, and twenty-one (21) in the reflective, or integrative stage, of the enactment process. These themes were then woven into a common story representing the pattern and meaning of change through therapeutic enactment for this group of co-researchers. Finally, notations made during the transposing of the transcripts into personal narratives, formulation of the essential themes, and construction of the common story were used to develop a theoretical story of change through therapeutic enactment, as a final level of hermeneutic interpretation. This theoretical story was then presented in summary form as a thematic sequence of multi-modal change processes representing a model of change through therapeutic enactment. The results of this study suggested numerous theoretical and technical implications. Foremost among theoretical implications was the suggestion that Tomkins (1992) script theory of affect may best illuminate the effects and processes of psychodrama and enactment. This study also had implications for interactional theories of development, contemporary psychoanalytic theories of interpersonal functioning, theories of moral development, theories of dream functioning, and ethological theories of myth and ritual. The results of this study also suggested a number of additional qualitative and comparative outcome studies for future research. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The aims of this project were (1) to investigate two forms of event perception: perception of movement and perception of sudden appearance, (2) to develop event perception procedures which could be applied to testing clinical populations, and (3) to relate event perception to abnormalities shown by neuroimaging. In addition issues relevant to each of the particular clinical populations involved were addressed. Event perception tasks used stimuli consisting of a background of randomly selected dots of light. In one task a dot was added to the display (appearance), in the other a dot started to move (movement onset). Four laboratory experiments were conducted examining the ability to detect and locate these events under varying conditions in healthy controls. Results indicated that neuronal coding strategies were different for appearances and movement onset. Laboratory tasks were adapted for clinical application and administered to groups of patients with different neurological conditions. Five studies were conducted to assess sensitivity and specificity of the Event Perception tasks in clinical settings. The groups studied were chronic solvent abusers, detoxified alcoholics, patients suffering from optic neuritis, and patients with traumatic brain injury. Event Perception tasks were found to be differentially sensitive to neurological conditions and showed dissociations and double dissociations both within and between neurological conditions. Relationships with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) were investigated in patients with head injury. Patterns of brain damage differed significantly for patients with impaired performance on the movement task. It is concluded that Event Perception tasks are of value in the assessment of neurological patients: They allow assessment of functions which are not usually evaluated in neuropsychological examinations, facilitate detection of subtle deficits and deficits which may present at an early stage, and offer greater specificity and sensitivity than many traditional neuropsychological test procedures. Event Perception tasks are easy to administer and do not suffer from training effects on repeated administration to the same degree as many traditional measures. It is also argued that tests with a theoretical basis are better suited to clinical research in neuropsychology than many traditional tasks because they potentially allow a more precise explanation and assessment of the abnormal processes under investigation.

published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The transtheoretical model has a substantial history of measuring the change process. Hemphill and Howell validated the Stages of Change Scale (SOCS) on adolescent offenders. The current study expands their research by developing an additional component of the TTM, the Decisional Balance Scale for Adolescent Offenders (DBS-AO). This measure assesses movement through the stages of change and provides insight into mechanisms through which adolescent offenders attempt to change their criminal behaviors. Two hundred thirty-nine adolescent offenders at the Gainesville State School completed the SOCS, DBS-AO, Paulhus Deception Scales (PDS), and the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). The study found the DBS-AO is psychometrically sound, demonstrates excellent reliability and has an underlying three-factor solution: Cons, Pros-Self, and Pros-Others. Offenders in the early stages of change scored significantly higher on the Cons scale. Offenders actively changing their behavior scored significantly higher on the Pro-Self and Pros-Other scales.

The thesis set out to explore means of coping with change when in a state of isolation and basic parameters and references in life have been lost. Isolation may be a result of a change in environment, such as an interstate move to take up a new job,or changing from an office environment to home based work. It can result from relational changes such as marriage breakdown or from major life stage changes such as retirement. The first stage of the study involved the establishment of a collaborative group to explore issues that each member had experienced in coping with change. The second stage was an individual exploration of the author's own journey involving changes in work environments and interstate moves. The third stage was a consideration of literature that reflected and supported the thesis, of gathering information from relevant case studies conducted.Out of these stages came the hypothesis that people cope with change in isolation through a sense of belonging associated with several factors.Reflections on the research process and methodologies have been considered and implications arising out of the research are discussed. The thesis concludes with evocations of the impact of the research findings on others. / Master of Science (Hons)(Social Ecology)

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 113-149.

The Challenge of System Justification for Acknowledging and Responding to Environmental Dilemmas and Climate Change

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego Sate University, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-121).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-119). Also available on the Internet.