This thesis considers why some crimes persist beyond the moment of newsworthiness and how they are able to transcend this period of intense reporting to become a feature of popular memory. The central argument is that the popular memory of a crime is built up over time through a synthesis of public discourses, which are predominantly developed in news reporting, people s everyday experience and the normative social frameworks of everyday life. A temporally sensitive analysis of two case studies, the murder of James Bulger and the murder of Sarah Payne, tests this hypothesis by exploring the connections and disconnections between the ongoing reporting of these crimes and the remembering of them. The study finds that the personal past and public discourse intertwine in remembered accounts of these crimes and considers that this is evidence of the ways audiences utilise crime news as an imaginative resource for understanding crime and criminality more broadly. It can thus be said that audiences use the news to frame, but not define their understandings of the world around us.

This thesis has two main objectives. First, it investigates how social support relationships - embedded within kinship systems, friendship networks and associational groups - contribute to the wellbeing of cash transfer beneficiaries in two urban districts in Ghana. Second, it explores how a formal social protection programme affects the wellbeing of beneficiaries both directly and indirectly via its effect on these other support relationships. The thesis takes the Ghana Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) cash transfer programme as a case study, examining how it is implemented in practice within an urban setting, and how social support relationships influence its effect on the wellbeing of cash recipients. Throughout this thesis wellbeing is used as a discursive space for looking at the often neglected non-material dimensions of wellbeing. In particular, it takes a relational wellbeing approach which emphasises how material, emotional and cognitive dimensions of wellbeing are embedded in social relationships. It uses a Qualitative Longitudinal Research (QLR) approach, complemented by a qualitative social network analysis to map the constellation of relationships on which urban recipients of LEAP transfers rely, and to explore the motivations and rationalities underpinning them. The findings of the thesis add to existing research on social relationships and cash transfers in Africa by extending the analysis to a contemporary urban context. They challenge the assumption that urban residents can draw upon a vibrant support system, by finding that such relationships can be unreliable, provide inadequate support and can be associated with exclusion and marginalization. In addition, the thesis finds that norms underpinning support relationships are constantly being reshaped and challenged. The thesis also highlights the important but diverse effects that formal social protection programmes can have on material, emotional and cognitive wellbeing of recipients, both directly and indirectly via their effect on other significant social relationships of beneficiaries.

In this chapter, the author draws on a historical case study of the Australian wine industry to explore variations in collective agency. The inductively derived process model illustrates the emergence of a new profession of scientific win- emaking, which unfolds in three phases. Each phase is characterized by a dis- tinct form of agency: distributed agency during the earliest phase, coordinated agency during later phases, and orchestrated agency during consolidation. In addition to exploring the temporal shifts in agency, the study includes a detailed analysis of the early stages of distributed agency, examining how col- lective agency is achieved in the absence of shared intentions.

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship between technology integration indicators and school level achievement. Four years of school level secondary data from publicly available databases maintained by the Florida Department of Education were combined for all public elementary, middle, and high schools in the state. This study examined approximately 2300 schools that participated each year in the Florida Innovates Survey about technology integration between 2003-04 and 2006-07. Complexity theory supported the use of multi-level modeling to examine the relationships between technology integration and outcomes. Three achievement outcomes (reading, mathematics, and writing) and two mediating behavioral outcomes (attendance and misconduct) were investigated. Moderating variables controlled in the model included school level, demographics, and learning environment. After data preparation, all composite variables were developed using factor analysis. Models were progressively built with significant variables at each level retained in subsequent levels of the study. A total of 94 models were estimated with maximum likelihood estimation using SAS 9.1.3 statistical software. The integration of technology is only one of the many factors that impact student learning within the classroom environment. Results supported previous research about the relationship between the moderating variables and school level achievement and confirmed the need to include moderating variables in the model. After controlling for all the other moderating variables, technology integration had a significant relationship with mean school achievement. Although the percent of teachers who regularly use technology for administrative purposes was consistently significant in the models for four out of five outcomes studied, the interactions with time, time2, and time3, resulted in curvilinear trends with inconsistent results. These inconsistent significant findings make drawing conclusions about the integration of technology within Florida's public schools difficult. Furthermore, the small changes observed in mean school achievement over the span of this study support the concept that time is a critical factor for school level learning and change. Therefore, continued analyses of the longitudinal trends for Florida schools in the relationship between technology integration variables and school achievement, while controlling for moderating variables, are recommended.

Several longitudinal studies show that over time the American public has become more approving of euthanasia and suicide for terminally ill persons. Yet, these previous findings are limited because they derive from biased estimates of disaggregated hierarchical data. Using insights from life course sociological theory and recently developed cross-classified mixed effects logistic regression, I better account for this liberalization process by disentangling the age, period, and cohort effects that contribute to longitudinal changes in these attitudes. Findings indicate that while attitudes toward euthanasia and suicide have liberalized over time, they remained relatively stable over the past 10 years. Furthermore, this study finds significant age effects in which the probability of agreement to euthanasia and suicide steadily decreases throughout the life course. Contrary to previous research, this study finds that when controlling for age and period effects, there are no significant birth-cohort effects that contribute to longitudinal changes in these attitudes.

A problem common to all current web link analyses is that, as the web is continuously evolving, any web-based study may be out of date by the time it is published in academic literature. It is therefore important to know how web link analyses results vary over time, with a low rate of variation lengthening the amount of time corresponding to a tolerable loss in quality. Moreover, given the lack of research on how academic web spaces change over time, from an information science perspective it would interesting to see what patterns and trends could be identified by longitudinal research and the study of university web links seems to provide a convenient means by which to do so. The aim of this research is to identify and track changes in three academic webs (UK, Australia and New Zealand) over time, tracking various aspects of academic webs including site size and overall linking characteristics, and to provide theoretical explanations of the changes found. This should therefore provide some insight into the stability of previous and future webometric analyses. Alternative Document Models (ADMs), created with the purpose of reducing the extent to which anomalies occur in counts of web links at the page level, have been used extensively within webometrics as an alternative to using the web page as the basic unit of analysis. This research carries out a longitudinal study of ADMs in an attempt to ascertain which model gives the most consistent results when applied to the UK, Australia and New Zealand academic web spaces over the last six years. The results show that the domain ADM gives the most consistent results with the directory ADM also giving more reliable results than are evident when using the standard page model. Aggregating at the site (or university) level appears to provide less consistent results than using the page as the standard unit of measure, and this finding holds true over all three academic webs and for each time period examined over the last six years. The question of whether university web sites publish the same kind of information and use the same kind of hyperlinks year on year is important from the perspective of interpreting the results of academic link analyses, because changes in link types over time would also force interpretations of link analyses to change over time. This research uses a link classification exercise to identify temporal changes in the distribution of different types of academic web links, using three academic web spaces in the years 2000 and 2006. Significant increases in ‘research oriented’, ‘social/leisure’ and ‘superficial’ links were identified as well as notable decreases in the ‘technical’ and ‘personal’ links. Some of these changes identified may be explained by general changes in the management of university web sites and some by more wide-spread Internet trends, e.g., dynamic pages, blogs and social networking. The increase in the proportion of research-oriented links is particularly hopeful for future link analysis research. Identifying quantitative trends in the UK, Australian and New Zealand academic webs from 2000 to 2005 revealed that the number of static pages and links in each of the three academic webs appears to have stabilised as far back as 2001. This stabilisation may be partly due to an increase in dynamic pages which are normally excluded from webometric analyses. In response to the problem for webometricians due to the constantly changing nature of the Internet, the results presented here are encouraging evidence that webometrics for academic spaces may have a longer-term validity than would have been previously assumed. The relationship between university inlinks and research activity indicators over time was examined, as well as the reasons for individual universities experiencing significant increases and decreases in inlinks over the last six years. The findings indicate that between 66% and 70% of outlinks remain the same year on year for all three academic web spaces, although this stability conceals large individual differences. Moreover, there is evidence of a level of stability over time for university site inlinks when measured against research. Surprisingly however, inlink counts can vary significantly from year to year for individual universities, for reasons unrelated to research, underlining that webometric results should be interpreted cautiously at the level of individual universities. Therefore, on average since 2001 the university web sites of the UK, Australia and New Zealand have been relatively stable in terms of size and linking patterns, although this hides a constant renewing of old pages and areas of the sites. In addition, the proportion of research-related links seems to be slightly increasing. Whilst the former suggests that webometric results are likely to have a surprisingly long shelf-life, perhaps closer to five years than one year, the latter suggests that webometrics is going to be increasingly useful as a tool to track research online. While there have already been many studies involving academic webs spaces, and much work has been carried out on the web from a longitudinal perspective, this thesis concentrates on filling a critical gap in current webometric research by combining the two and undertaking a longitudinal study of academic webs. In comparison with previous web-related longitudinal studies this thesis makes a number of novel contributions. Some of these stem from extending established webometric results, either by introducing a longitudinal aspect (looking at how various academic web metrics such as research activity indicators, site size or inlinks change over time) or by their application to other countries. Other contributions are made by combining traditional webometric methods (e.g. combining topical link classification exercises with longitudinal study) or by identifying and examining new areas for research (for example, dynamic pages and non-HTML documents). No previous web-based longitudinal studies have focused on academic links and so the main findings that (for UK, Australian and New Zealand academic webs between 2000 and 2006) certain academic link types exhibit changing patterns over time, approximately two-thirds of outlinks remain the same year on year and the number of static pages and links appears to have stabilised are both significant and novel.

abstract: The current study investigated the dynamic interplay of career decision ambiguity tolerance and career indecision over three assessment times in a sample of college students (n=583). While the previous research has repeatedly shown an association of career decision ambiguity tolerance with career indecision, the direction of this association has not been adequately assessed with longitudinal investigation. It was hypothesized in this study that there is a reciprocal pattern of career decision ambiguity tolerance leading to subsequent career indecision and career indecision leading to subsequent career decision ambiguity tolerance. Using a cross-lagged panel design, this study found support for the reciprocal pattern that aversion with ambiguity led to increased negative experience, choice anxiety, and lack of readiness in career decision making, while negative experience, choice anxiety, and lack of readiness led to increased aversion with ambiguity as well. Additionally, this study revealed that choice anxiety and readiness for career decision making led to increased interests in new information. The key findings were discussed with respect to the theoretical and clinical implications for career counseling along with limitations and suggestions for future research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Counseling Psychology 2017

The changing working environment and ageing workforce suggest that many workers will inevitably reach a career plateau, a stage where people regard future promotions as unlikely, or no longer feel challenged at work. Experiencing career plateau is found to be associated with negative job attitudes and performance in the workplace. However, existing studies have been mainly cross-sectional in design and few of them investigate the mechanisms and the conditions that influence the negative relationship. This study follows a quantitative longitudinal research design to further enhance the understanding of the relationships between career plateau and job outcomes. The job outcomes in this research include work attitudes such as job satisfaction, organisational commitment, turnover intentions and three aspects of job performance. Specifically, the three research aims of this thesis are: (1) to understand the causal directions between career plateau and job outcomes, (2) to examine whether employees’ unmet expectations may explain these relations and (3) to investigate whether employees’ age may modify the mediation effects of career plateau on job outcomes via unmet expectations. Three waves of data were collected from working individuals in various industries over an eight-month period. The majority of the participants were working in the UK or in Taiwan. Results showed that unmet expectations partially explain the negative relationship between career plateau and job attitudes over time but not for job performance. Furthermore, age did not affect the strength of the mediation effect of career plateau on the job outcomes through unmet expectations. The significance of this research is three-fold. First, it provides a new explanation for the unfavourable work attitudes of plateaued individuals. The findings that career plateaued employees have lower job satisfaction, lower organisational commitment and higher turnover intentions can partly be explained by unfulfilled expectations in receiving promotions or challenging tasks. Second, the study signals the danger of career plateau at any age, as younger and older workers were found to be equally influenced by career plateau. Finally, this is the first study in the area that seeks to resolve the debate over the directional relationship between career plateau and job outcomes. The implications in theory and in practice, limitations and suggestions for future research directions are discussed.

Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) sample size recommendations are mostly made with traditional group-design research in mind, as HLM as been used almost exclusively in group-design studies. Single-case research can benefit from utilizing hierarchical linear growth modeling, but sample size recommendations for growth modeling with HLM are scarce and generally do not consider the sample size combinations typical in single-case research. The purpose of this Monte Carlo simulation study was to expand sample size research in hierarchical linear growth modeling to suit single-case designs by testing larger level-1 sample sizes (N1), ranging from 10 to 80, and smaller level-2 sample sizes (N2), from 5 to 35, under the presence of autocorrelation to investigate bias and power. Estimates for the fixed effects were good for all tested sample-size combinations, irrespective of the strengths of the predictor-outcome correlations or the level of autocorrelation. Such low sample sizes, however, especially in the presence of autocorrelation, produced neither good estimates of the variances nor adequate power rates. Power rates were at least adequate for conditions in which N2 = 20 and N1 = 80 or N2 = 25 and N1 = 50 when the squared autocorrelation was .25.Conditions with lower autocorrelation provided adequate or high power for conditions with N2 = 15 and N1 = 50. In addition, conditions with high autocorrelation produced less than perfect power rates to detect the level-1 variance.

Recent literature on parent-child sex communication (PCSC) has identified optimal sex communication as being not only frequent, but also open in quality, and proactive in timing. However, no studies have sought to understand what motivates parents to participate in this type of optimal parent-child sex communication, nor assessed these relationships longitudinally. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to inform the analysis, this study investigated parent characteristics (parent's sexual self-concept and parenting dimensions) that may longitudinally predict optimal PCSC. This study further examined whether parental sex communication efficacy mediated these relationships. The sample included 607 mother-child dyads, and the father-figure when available (mother-father-child triads (n = 363); mother-child dyads (n = 244)). Adolescent children were 12-17 years old (Wave 1 Mage = 14.55, SD = 1.68), White (56%), and cisgender female (51%). Data were collected annually for 3 years. A longitudinal SEM analysis was utilized. Results revealed that parental sex communication efficacy is longitudinally associated with children's reports of optimal sex communication. The discussion will focus on the importance of efficacy in improving parent-child sex communication processes.