The number of Chinese international students obtaining their education at American institutions of higher education has reached a pinnacle, in that more Chinese international students attend American colleges and universities than ever before (Institute of International Education, 2015). Colleges and universities actively recruit Asian international students, especially those from the People’s Republic of China. As Chinese international students continue to represent an ever-greater percentage of the student bodies at colleges and universities, these institutions have a responsibility to attend to the mental health needs of this population. Within this population, research suggests that male Asian international students hold less positive attitudes toward seeking help than their female peers (Komiya & Eells, 2001). Since the participants in this study represent an intersection of identities, the extant research from several populations will be reviewed. Specifically, literature examining college students’, college men’s, racial minorities’, and international students’ mental health needs, attitudes towards mental health resources, and help-seeking behaviors will be discussed. The literature review will also build a case for examining male Chinese international students’ mental health needs. The goal of this study is to provide greater insight into how male Chinese international students perceive mental health resources. The current study utilized Consensual Qualitative Research (Hill, 2012; Hill et al. 2005; Hill et al., 1997) to examine male Chinese international students’ experiences as international students, their adjustment to American culture, their mental health needs, their perceptions of mental health resources, and their help-seeking behaviors. Results indicated that participants struggled with a number of aspects of their experience as international students, specifically the adjustment to a new language, academic challenges, difficulty with isolation, and professional dilemmas. Participants also identified positive aspects of their experiences as international students including but not limited to making friends and academic successes. Participants revealed copious challenges within their adjustment to American culture. The majority of participants reported that they enjoyed the cultural differences, although participants often noted their dislike of American culture and their preference for Chinese culture. Participants also discussed perceived discrepancies in cultural norms between American culture and Chinese culture. The majority of participants in this study had never sought psychological counseling before. The results indicated that participants were aware of a number of barriers to seeking counseling including the lack of need for counseling, the desire to manage their concerns by themselves, the fear of judgment or stigma from seeking help, the perception that counseling is not helpful, and that other resources were preferred. Participants also identified several potential reasons for seeking help including relationship difficulties, academic challenges, and severe mental health needs. The findings of this study also point to several ways in which participants felt masculinity could impact their perceptions of counseling. Although many participants did not feel that masculinity impacted help-seeking behaviors or perceptions of counseling, participants acknowledged that masculine norms like the need to handle problems alone or not wanting to seem weak or emotional could impact their perceptions of counseling. Participants also identified a number of differences between counseling in the United States versus counseling in China. Results indicated that participants viewed counseling as more developed, professional, effective, and trustworthy in the United States. Lastly, participants shared their opinions about mental health concerns. Some participants identified mental health concerns as important, while others felt that they were not important or were perhaps less important than concerns like physical health. The author identifies practical applications for mental health professionals working with international students, aspiring to provide more culturally-sensitive services to male Chinese international students. Limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are provided.

There is a dearth of studies investigating methods by which parental compliance may be enhanced. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relative efficacy of four conditions--high information, prompting, incentive , and comparison control--in increasing parental compliance. The self-help recommendation was to obtain a book or video from a local library. Parents were from a small, rural, northern Utah community; their children were diagnosed with externalizing behavior problems. Chi-square analyses were utilized to assess statistically significant differences, and effect sizes were computed to assess magnitude of association. The incentive intervention influenced parental compliance to a greater degree than either the comparison control or other intervention conditions. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate the association of certain sociodemographic variables with parental compliance. Results of a logistic regression were indicative of no contribution of sociodemographic variables to the prediction of parental compliance. The relationship of current results with previous studies is discussed, as well as implications for clinical practice and future research.

Pre-school aged children experience challenging behaviors at a relatively common rate. Research shows that approximately 10–25 % of preschool-aged children engage in challenging behaviors to a greater degree than would be expected for their age (Lavigne, Gibbons, Christoffel, Arend, Rosenbaum, Binns, Sawon, Sobel & Isaacs, 1996). Problem behaviors are often the result of a child not following a typical developmental trajectory. Atypical development appears when a child either lags behind or jumps ahead of typical peer progress in physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social development or in adaptive life skills. When children with challenging behaviors are left untreated, their everyday functioning can become significantly impaired, and many will require more intensive supports and services over time (Kauffman, Mock & Simpson, 1996). The presence of chronic challenging behaviors negatively impacts important aspects of a child's development and puts him or her risk for a number of adverse circumstances over time, including a dysfunctional family life, conflicts within interpersonal relationships, alcohol and drug use, physical and sexual assault, suicide, academic failure, unsuccessful employment, and involvement with the justice system (Boulter & Rickwood, 2013; Durand & Hieneman, 2008). The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the interventions parents try for their children. Including their thoughts, feelings and perceptions of each intervention. Previous research has provided insight into factors that influence parents’ help-seeking process and how parents begin the help seeking process (i.e., seeking formal or informal support). However, little is known about their thoughts, perceptions, and feelings towards the different types of interventions used and how they’ve affected their children's problem behaviors. Qualitative methods were used to better understand their help-seeking journeys. The experience of 5 mothers raising children with complex and challenging behaviors were captured through open-ended interviews in this study. The results of this study found several notable themes to emerge from the interviews of mothers raising children with atypical development. Specifically, several mothers reported a typical pregnancy and early development. Participants described a difficult first year with feeding their child, their child not meeting developmental milestones and having several unique quirks. Several parents also described their infant as experiencing higher rates of sickness when compared to other infants. Parents also described the age in which problem behaviors were first identified in their child, who first became concerned with their child’s behavior and their initial help seeking steps. Parents described behaviors of concerns including; difficulty eating, delayed speech and motor development and restricted interests. Themes emerged that described the parent’s process in seeking out early interventions for their child which included the evaluation process and the therapies that were first recommended to them. At the conclusion of the evaluation, parents were typically given a diagnosis. Themes emerged that discussed the parent’s initial reaction to the diagnosis and their self-driven research to find answers. All but one parent discussed taking their child to their pediatrician when they first had concerns. Through the school years, parents discussed the difficulties they faced in finding school based interventions and supports for their child. Some of the interventions included; medications, behavioral therapies, and occupational and speech therapy. With medication specifically, parents discussed their experience in trying to find the right medication. This study provides a better understanding of the experiences of mothers raising children with complex and challenging behaviors. It also provides information on how practitioners can approach parents when and if they have concerns with a child’s development. In addition, data from this study supports the needs for increased advocacy, supports and services for these families.

A non-concurrent multiple baseline design across eight participants was used to determine whether working through Hayes and Smith's (2005) book would help those with public speaking anxiety. Hayes and Smith (2005) is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It encourages people to accept internal experiences as opposed to avoiding and struggling with them. For the purposes of this study, the book was divided into nine components, which participants discussed with the researcher. They also completed measures daily, during baseline and over the intervention period, as well as a battery of tests pre-baseline, mid and post intervention. The multiple baseline data showed that self-reported willingness to approach public speaking situations increased while self-reported avoidance decreased over the intervention. The pre and post measures also showed avoidance of internal experiences decreased significantly after the intervention. These outcomes are in line with changes suggested to result from engaging in such a therapy. The pre and post results also showed that quality of life increased significantly from mid to post-intervention. However, engagement with values did not change. While this measure is expected to change after such an intervention, this result may have occurred because the ideas about values were introduced last in the book. The intervention also led to significant decreases in anxiety, significant changes in thoughts about public speaking and significant increases in anxiety control as shown by the test battery. These findings are positive but are not predicted by processes posited for this therapy. However, there was no control group so these pre vs post comparisons must be interpreted with caution. Despite this limitation, the results suggest that the book, together with therapist contact, can help those with public speaking anxiety.

The purpose of this project was to design and evaluate a sport-based life skills intervention designed for indigenous New Zealand (Maori) youth who may be exposed to drug or alcohol abuse. An indigenous research approach known as Kaupapa Maori research was utilised. As an indigenous approach, Kaupapa Maori signifies the importance of research with Maori being initiated, determined, and validated by Maori and in particular, by those directly involved with the research initiative (Bishop, 1996; Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999). As a result of adhering to a Kaupapa Maori approach the participants determined additional areas of interest including academic self-esteem, intrinsic motivation for schoolwork and career awareness. Therefore, the initial project grew to include several other life skills areas identified by the participants. The life skills basis of the 'Hokowhitu' intervention was adapted from the Going for the Goal (GOAL) and Sports United to Promote Education and Recreation (SUPER) programmes developed by Professor Steve Danish (Danish, 1997; Danish & Nellen, 1997; Danish, Meyer, Mash, Howard, Curl, Brunelle & Owens, 1998). The GOAL and SUPER programmes taught life skills to adolescents including informed decision-making, health-enhancing activities (e.g., goal setting) and health-compromising activities (e.g., drug & alcohol abuse). A New Zealand (NZ) version of the GOAL programme was successfully pilot-tested in 1997-1998 in NZ schools with non-Maori adolescents (Hodge & Danish, 1999; Hodge, Cresswell, Sherburn, & Dugdale, 1999). The evaluation of the Hokowhitu programme used both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The qualitative investigation received an enthusiastic response and supportive results for the Hokowhitu programme. Many of the research participants preferred the qualitative investigative approach because of the culturally recognised components (e.g., Te kanohi ki kanohi or face-to-face method used to ask questions). The quantitative investigation used; Mann-Whitney U, Wilcoxon, Chi Square and McNemar statistical tests (Harraway, 1995). The outcome of the overall programme evaluation showed that the Hokowhitu programme provided improvements in; (a) academic self-esteem, (b) increased intrinsic motivation for schoolwork, (c) increased career awareness, and (d) increased drug and alcohol awareness in adolescent Maori. Also, there was some statistical support for the Hokowhitu programme and evidence that life skills and Kaupapa Maori ideologies were able to be successfully integrated into a sport-based programme.

The present study examined the efficacy of a self-help guide in the area of marital separation and divorce. The guide itself was written after an extensive series of interviews with people undergoing separation and professionals such as lawyers and counsellors who deal with separating people as part of their working day. The experiment demanded firstly a thorough investigation of two major areas viz.(a) the new Family Law Act and its effects, and (b) the current trend to self-help in many areas of our society. The particular style of self-help under investigation was help through reading-bibliotherapy. A factor analysis was performed in order to determine which facets of separation most required attention from those who have separated or are about to separate. Methodology involved using three groups matched for certain characteristics to test for changes after bibliotherapeutic interventions. The failure to find statistically significant results was discussed in terms of methodological problems. Socially significant results emerged as implications for welfare practice, and possible legal changes were examined.

<p>The purpose of this report is to present the findings from the thesis work performed at Qurius Sweden (former Ibitec). The goal was to evaluate how usable Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) was in general and how usable two portal solutions created for MOSS 2007 were in particular. The goal also consisted ofevaluating how SharePoint could be improved in terms of usability and accessibility. The last part of the thesis work was to create a dynamic help tool, from where application specific help could be created.The usability was evaluated with a variant of usability engineering. Not all of the original method could be used because the products analyzed were already finished. The results from the analysis show that MOSS 2007 is quite usable, especially when it comes to document handling. It is also possible to create web pages and sites with ease. MOSS 2007 lacks in usability when it comes to presenting information to the user regarding what is going on in the system and. The system can also be quite complex and much to grasp for an end user. Solutions created in MOSS 2007 follows closely the usability of MOSS 2007 but they can be made very usable if only certain aspects are considered. Example of improvements could be the placement of the help system, clearer error messages and an overlook of managing user rights.The dynamic help tool was created in the programming language C# and based on the .NET platform. The implementation is a so-called Web Part that can easily be inserted on a page in MOSS 2007. The help tool uses the built in help system in MOSS 2007 for editing present help files and for adding new files to it. The help tool has a very minimalistic design and the focus was on the tasks it should be performing rather than a nice-looking interface. To ensure usability for the help tool, future work should be done, testing the product with real users and apply other usability methods to improve the help tool. As of now, no usability methods have been used while developing the help tool, nor have any tests with real users been performed. This is to be considered as future work.As a conclusion, both MOSS 2007 and the solutions created for it can be said to have a certain degree of usability shown from the evaluations. Improvements can be done, and should be, in order to increase the users’ experience. With the help tool, it is now possible to create solution specific help for a project intended for MOSS 2007.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-105).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-99).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Peter Rees, Dept. of Geography. Includes bibliographical references.