<p> Prior research indicates that human service care providers experience especially high levels of chronic workplace stress and burnout compared to workers in other professions. Chronic workplace stress is linked to a variety of poor physical and mental health outcomes. There has been significantly more research to assess and support human service care providers in education, social welfare, and health care than providers working in law enforcement such as the population considered in this case study: juvenile justice officers, JJOs. In particular, there has been little prior research on juvenile justice officers (JJOs), who have the difficult job of working closely with incarcerated youth populations. </p><p> The intended contributions of this study are: (1) developing a descriptive baseline understanding of stress among an important and understudied population of human service care providers, (2) exploring human service care provider workplace stress through a new lens of empathy and meaning and (3) piloting a training to reduce stress with a focus on facilitating empathy and meaning. This research is carried out over three phases. </p><p> The promising insights from the case study and pilot analysis include strategies to support JJOs finding meaning in their workplace. These strategies are achieved through creating opportunities for building relationships and empathy with youth and coworkers, improving the system for communication and positive feedback with management and teaching emotion regulation, mindfulness and empathic communication to improve individual coping skills.</p>

<p> Using action research design and methodology, the goal of this project was to reduce and prevent bullying at a rural middle school in South Dakota through the implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP). This project was rooted in replication of Dr. Dan Olweus' seminal work on bullying prevention, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. N = 521 students participated in the project. The OBPP Implementation Flowchart and OBPP Scope and Sequence guided implementation. Despite a high degree of fidelity of implementation on the OBPP Readiness Assessment, OBPP Classroom Implementation Checklist, and OBPP First Year Checklist, the results on the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire (OBQ) were mixed with some key indicators showing an increase in bullying behaviors. However, the results are limited due to the OBPP's propensity to bring about increased recognition and reporting of bullying behaviors in the first year as a result of skills and strategies learned through class meetings. Additional time and study are recommended in order to draw definitive conclusions regarding the overall effectiveness of the OBPP. Other recommendations for further study include: improved fidelity of implementation and the addition of a prosocial skills/character education component to support the tenets of the OBPP.</p>

<p> Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a major role in disasters around the world. As they carry out disaster work NGOs are often grouped together as the "NGO sector," although their varied size, scope, focus and country of origin make generalizations difficult. Coordinating NGO disaster work has been an ongoing challenge for governments and for NGOs themselves for reasons ranging from the wishes of NGO funders to uncertainty about what coordination means to competition for funds. </p><p> This thesis uses a complex adaptive system (CAS) framework to understand how NGOs may coordinate their own work. A complex adaptive system is made up of a set of independent agents that interact with each other to form a whole entity without the benefit of an explicit central control mechanism. </p><p> The qualitative study carried out semi-structured interviews with 16 NGOs active in disaster in Honduras to explore to what extent their interactions conformed to six characteristics of complex adaptive systems - 1) schemata; 2) self-organization; 3) communication and information; 4) rules; 5) learning and adaptation; and 6) aggregate outcomes, and relations with government. </p><p> Results of the interviews showed that many NGOs have multiple links among themselves with active communication channels that depend heavily on personal relationships. Interviews showed that collaboration among NGOs has increased over the past decade, although the degree of cooperation among them was inconsistent. Interviewees found it difficult to name an aggregate system-wide outcome. Government relations were found to be mixed - many NGOs had both positive and negative things to say about their relationships with government. </p><p> The NGOs were found to have both characteristics of a CAS and factors that did not fit a CAS description. NGOs must continually invest energy to maintain a system because entropic forces away from increased organization remain strong.</p>

<p> This study examines the use of performance ethnography as an advocacy tool for students with non-apparent disabilities at Mills College, a four-year institution in Oakland, California. The focus was on the sometimes challenging relationships between these students and their instructors. The methods in this study included analysis of a script that was created and performed by four women students with non-apparent disabilities and a series of interviews held pre-performance and then conducted at one and six months post-performance. The four student writer/performers were interviewed, as well as four faculty members who agreed to participate in the project. After analyzing the data I concluded that performance ethnography or ethnotheatre was a meaningful advocacy tool that deepened understanding and raised awareness and had the potential to improve student/faculty relationships. I recommend that such projects are encouraged in student social justice organizations and receive support from college administrations. For example, after a student performance such as <i>We Are Here to be Heard,</i> scheduling follow-up student/faculty workshops would enhance the learning experience for all concerned. Practitioners in disability services and student life who want to work with marginalized students would be well served to read some of the references cited in this study, and such practical guides for doing this kind of work such as Saldana's Ethnotheatre (2005). Based on my experience, staff considering this type of advocacy work with students with disabilities, apparent or non-apparent, also need to be mindful that embodied work may release strong emotions and topics such as stigma and identity threat may trigger painful memories. It is important that there is sufficient support to contain feelings that may arise, that boundaries are very clear and finally, the creative space needs to be a place of safety and security for all.</p>

<p>In the realm of air warfare, no topic has generated more controversy or discussion in recent years than the implications of the increased use and proliferation of remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs). This dissertation seeks to build on existing models of technology, diffusion, and doctrine to examine the present and future role of RPAs in warfare. To do so, I place RPAs in the context of a broader Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), evaluating their effectiveness relative to other capabilities, modeling their likely diffusion and evolution, and examining the legal implications for conflict. I conclude many of the challenges posed by RPAs will be different than the current debate suggests, with issues like automation the laws of targeted killing being secondary to understanding the distinctions between tactical and strategic RPAs and the potential for escalation of conflict based on limited understanding of the true capabilities of the RPA. Strategic RPAs are revolutionary in their impact to small wars, but are unlikely to diffuse widely given the limited strategic requirements for this type of warfare and the high financial and organizational costs of building such systems. Tactical RPAs will spread globally and rapidly, but will be limited in their military application and are more likely to be problematic for their misuse than for the new capabilities they provide. This perspective will provide policymakers a framework for better understanding both the strengths and limitations of RPA warfare, and outline basic planning considerations for future wars based on the spread of this technology as well as institutional obstacles to diffusion posed to states, including the U.S. </p>

<p> <b>Long-term care</b> is the greatest uninsured risk facing the American public today. The failure to plan for long-term care has had a serious, and often devastating, impact on families that are thrust into the role of caregiver to an elderly parent. The failure to plan for long-term care also has very serious consequences for society, which, through public programs such as Medicaid, pays for a huge and unsustainable portion of long-term care supports and services. The impact of the failure to plan for long-term care is becoming more devastating due to the confluence of several factors. People are living longer now than ever before thereby increasing the demand for long-term care services and supports, with the population of senior citizens expected to more than double in the near future. There are far fewer family caregivers available to provide care to elderly parents as a result of lower birth rates, later marriages, and the rapid increase of women participating in the workforce, reducing the available pool of family caregivers. Understanding the dynamics of long-term care planning, and the failure to plan for long-term care, is a necessary step in successfully addressing long-term care planning. Adult children of elderly parents rarely participate in their parents' future planning for long-term care. The purpose of this qualitative, multiple case study, was to explore how adult children's information deficiencies and risk aversion impact how they advise their parents on the purchase of long-term care insurance. The participants for the study were 12 adult children between the ages of 25 and 44, with incomes greater than $75,000 per year, with assets greater than $200,000. These participants were carefully selected from a commercially available demographic list from the New York-Long Island Metropolitan area, to be representative of adult children with similar demographics from other regions of the country. The research findings suggested that the information deficiencies of adult children of elderly parents is the greatest barrier to adult children's participation in the long-term care planning of their elderly parents. The findings indicate that adult children of elderly parents are unaware of the costs of long-term care, the chances of their parents needing long-term care, the burden of caregiving on themselves and their families, and how medical insurance and Medicare play virtually no role in a long-term care event. Other findings indicated that once these adult children were provided with credible updated information on the factors pertaining to long-term care their risk aversion toward such planning was replaced with the willingness to engage in long-term care planning with their parents. From a practical application standpoint, this study is important for adult children of elderly parents, the elderly parents, long-term care advocates, long-term care providers, legislators at all levels of government, and insurance companies in the business of long-term care insurance, as this study provides insights into the perceptions of long-term care by those most affected by the failure to plan for long-term care. Future research is required to expand on these findings by developing appropriate, credible, and understandable awareness campaigns regarding the nature of long-term care and its impact on families and society.</p>

<p> This dissertation is an arts-based research project into transformative followership &ndash; the complementary skill set to transformative leadership. The outcome of the research is a collection of stories &ndash; a fictionalized presentation of the findings. This research departs from the transactional view that most followers are cogs in the wheels of productivity who aspire to become leaders, arriving at the more recent view that followers are critical components of a transformative leadership dynamic.</p><p> Reframing followers as change agents that are effecting deep cultural transformation, it is suggested that our collective experiences generate contemporary cultural myths that are more suitably presented in a format that validates subjective experience &ndash; storytelling. The relationship between facts, fiction, and truth will be considered. Three recent social protest movements provide a context for observing transformational followers and how, or if, they can be categorized.</p><p> Acknowledging and honoring the impact of electronic media on the storytelling tradition, all of these elements &ndash; reframed followers, our collective experience, and modern-day storytelling &ndash; combine to create a new paradigm for looking at followership. Keywords: followership, change agents, storytelling </p>

<p> This research focused on three primary objectives: 1) identify barriers and facilitators to subsistence harvesters' meaningful participation in collaborative management of fish and wildlife in Western Alaska, 2) define subsistence harvesters' perceptions of a meaningful role in management, and 3) understand why subsistence harvesters' participation at collaborative management meetings has declined as indicated by a decline in applications to serve on regional advisory councils. I conducted semi-structured interviews with seventeen subsistence harvesters and three agency managers in Western Alaska. I also analyzed two public record transcripts of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta Regional Advisory Council. Results indicate that subsistence harvesters in Western Alaska defined their meaningful role as the ability to work together and participate equally in management planning and regulatory decision making on management of fish and wildlife. Challenges to communication between subsistence harvesters and agency managers include language differences, use of technical jargon by managers at meetings, lack of flow of information between stakeholders, and the value stakeholders assign to one and others' knowledge. Interaction between stakeholders remains infrequent contributing to the lack of cultural awareness and understanding between stakeholders. Furthermore, factors which influence the timing of stakeholder engagement and where and how collaborative management occurs have affected subsistence harvesters' meaningful participation. </p><p> Subsistence harvesters' participation and applications for membership on the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta Regional Advisory Council are declining at least in part due to subsistence harvesters' perceptions that their participation is meaningless and their role does not allow for their equal participation in decision making on fish and wildlife management related issues. Secondly, the lack of informal and formal meetings between stakeholders in Western Alaskan communities has resulted in subsistence harvesters' lack of exposure to the Federal Subsistence Management Program. To better understand subsistence harvesters' meaningful participation, I recommend that managers focus on how and why the differences between stakeholders' cultures, worldviews on land and animals, approaches to management, and perceptions of a meaningful role are interrelated to and influence the observable outcomes of collaborative management in Western Alaska.</p>

<p> The purpose of the study was to examine what role social control, in the context of family, school, and community, played in the participants' decision to join gangs in their adolescent years. The study examined the lives of four male ex-gang members over the age of 18, with extensive criminal records and poor academic histories. Participants were chosen from a Stockton reentry facility where ex-offenders were in the process of improving their lives by breaking the chains of street gang involvement, criminality, and incarceration. </p><p> The findings revealed that social control administered by family, school, law enforcement, and community all played a significant role in shaping each participant's decision to join his prospective gang in adolescence. The researcher found that while the family life of the participants was the prime mover in terms of a nudge toward gang life, school was also a place where they were constantly devalued, in large part because educators did not understand them, and the teachers arrived to their classrooms ill equipped for the realities of teaching in schools located in violence-ridden neighborhoods where the youth suffered morbid and multiple exposure to trauma. In fact, the teachers and law enforcement's inept ways of addressing the participant's maladaptive behaviors&mdash;with a propensity for handling all issues with punitive measures&mdash;ended up creating incentives for the participants to join a gang.</p>

<p> This is an interpretative phenomenological study examining the lived experiences of five long-lasting, self-report satisfied, German-American military couples, using semi-structured interviews. Each bicultural couple that participated was married thirty years or longer and consisted of one German native wife and one American veteran husband. Eight themes emerged from the data: (a) tri-cultural marriage experiences; (b) faith, religion, belief systems; (c) intimacy; (d) overcoming: good coping, commitment, and humor; (e) respect and appreciation systems; (f) trust and fidelity; (g) communication and the need to improve; and (h) keeping things alive.</p><p> <b>Keywords:</b> Bicultural marriage, Long-lasting marriage, Phenomenology, and Veterans</p>