Rural experiences are under-represented in the end-of-life care literature. In addition, population projections indicate that the numbers of older rural people are increasing. In an attempt to better understand their needs, this study considers how older people experience end-of-life (EOL) care in a rural New Zealand setting. Having responded to local media and community notices, seven participants, who in the last eighteen months had cared for someone over the age of 65 with a terminal illness, spoke about their experience of rural EOL care. Their stories were then transcribed and analysed, using narrative analysis. Participants spoke about similar issues, but from different, sometimes conflicting, perspectives. Positioning themselves primarily as carers, rather than as rural people, the participants’ stories nevertheless reflected their social location for caring, as they talked about exhaustion and needing 24 hour support; limited access to specialist palliative care services; and the difficulties of caring for people with complex needs. At the same time they spoke of the joys and rewards of caring. The ambivalence and conflict evident in the stories indicates the participants’ location in a particular place and time in the history of dying. Caught between two paradigms of care, these participants vacillate between the desire for the empathic, compassionate care of yesteryear and the best that modern medical technology can offer. Discussing when to continue and when to stop medical intervention produced the most conflicting perspectives. However, all agreed that having time to form therapeutic relationships is a key component of EOL care. Overall, the stories demonstrate that the multiple and complex experiences of older rural people render stereotypical assumptions about rural life and dying at home problematic. However, as this study demonstrates, simply talking with people provides access to and understanding of their lived realities. Incorporating this kind of approach in future rural EOL care planning will move us closer to achieving contemporary goals of positive ageing and dying well.

Despite evidence to the contrary, policy makers, some researchers and many who provide health and social services to sex workers continue to reflect and reinforce the notion that sex workers are dysfunctional and constitute a threat to public health. This thesis presents the results of a study which explicitly examined how indoor sex workers look after their psychological wellbeing. Twelve participants (who had worked as sex workers for at least 3 years) took part in semi-structured interviews and discussed how they looked after themselves both at work and in their wider social context. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Two main themes emerged from the data. The first, “doing sex work”, relates to workplace practices. The second theme, “being a sex worker”, relates to how the women understand their experience of being a sex worker in their social context and how they care for themselves in this arena; also apparent in this theme are aspects related to entry and exit of the industry. All participants took part in the study to increase understanding of and social justice for sex workers. Most of the participants see sex work as having a positive contribution to their personal growth. The findings show that participants are resilient and employ self-care practices that are commonly used by many in occupations that deal with people or who are stigmatised in some way. Major conclusions drawn from the study are that working in a supportive environment, prior understandings of sex work, personal traits and reasons for entering the sex industry are closely related to positive psychological wellbeing.

When people migrate to a new country, they experience changes in many areas of life. Migrants are faced with the challenges of making sense of as well as dealing with these changes in life. This research is interested in understanding the experiences of Chinese migrants in New Zealand as well as exploring how to conduct 'psychological intervention‘ work with recent Chinese migrants to deal with the challenges associated with migration. This research consists of two parts. The first part is concerned with developing a better understanding of the way Chinese migrants make sense of their experiences after migrating to New Zealand. In this part, focus groups were held and a discursive approach was used to analyze participants' accounts. Findings from this part show that negotiating meanings for "migration" and "fitting in" is the central process for Chinese migrants to make sense of their migratory experiences in New Zealand. In this meaning-making process, Chinese cultural meanings provide useful discursive resources for Chinese migrants to draw upon to better understand their experiences of migrating from China to New Zealand. Chinese sayings, such as "fish or bear‘s paw", "loss are accompanied by gain", "life is about negotiating loss and gain", are used by Chinese migrants in ways that allow them more flexibility in constructing their experiences in New Zealand. More importantly, adopting a dialectical sense-making embedded in traditional Chinese cultural knowledge is helpful for participants to transfer their discursive constructions from negative to positive aspects of their migration experiences. The second part of this research involves exploration and application of a culturally appropriate 'psychological intervention‘ with recent Chinese migrants in transition from living in China to living in New Zealand. This part draws upon the findings from the first part of the research. In the second part, two groups of participants were invited to attend a three-session group intervention. Useful discursive constructions around flexible meanings of "migration" and "fitting in" found in the first part of the research were introduced to participants. A discursive analytical approach was used to observe how participants take up these introduced meanings and to examine the discursive changes throughout the three group sessions. The second part of the research illustrates that participants took up the introduced meanings of "migration" and "fitting in" as a flexible process, and use these to further co-construct helpful meanings to negotiate their 'problematic‘ experiences. In all, this research articulates the importance of cultural meanings and cultural ways of making sense of migratory experiences by Chinese migrants. It also shows the importance of building a shared experience, making use of Chinese cultural meanings, and taking a social constructionist approach in psychological intervention work with Chinese migrants. The implications of this research are discussed in terms of further research on migrants' experiences and how to conduct 'psychological interventions' with Chinese migrants.

The study explored the relationship between retirement and marital status and objective and subjective measures of social support. A secondary analysis was conducted on a sample of 6,662 men and women aged 55-70 years of age. Results of a series of 2-way ANOVAs revealed greater interaction with friends amongst retired individuals than those who were employed. Marital status was shown to be associated with interaction with family and levels of perceived social support. An interaction between retirement and marital status was also shown to influence levels of perceived social support. The results reveal that retirement and marital status have an individual and interaction effect on various measures of social support and indicate the importance of considering marital status when researching, educating and working with issues regarding retirement and social support.

The thesis investigated the notion of ego depletion in children, on classroom-based, 'academic' type tasks. Two major studies conducted with primary school students, aged between 10 and 14 years explored how an act of effortful self-control can impact adversely on performance and volition on a second, seemingly unrelated task. A third study investigated teacher perceptions of ego depletion effects.

The way in which we perceive and interpret the causes of situations is likely to have a profound influence on our subsequent behaviour. It has been well established that the experience of anger is likely to systematically influence the cognitive processing style and cognitive skills that the individual will use in understanding, and responding to, interpersonal situations. One important process that may be affected by the regular experience of intense anger (trait anger), is the dispositional propensity to attempt to understand the thoughts, feelings, and point of view of another person in an interpersonal interaction (i.e., perspective taking). A study was conducted to test this theoretical hypothesis. In addition, the study attempted to examine the influence of perspective taking on anger experience, control, and expression.

Perspective taking, the main cognitive component of empathy, is considered within the psychological literature to be a significant part of human interaction. Despite extensive investigation into the outcomes of this construct, the process by which people take another's psychological point of view has received comparatively little attention. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate in three studies what the individual does when attempting to take the perspective of another person. The first study investigated the particular strategies which individuals use when engaging in perspective-taking behaviours. Dominant themes to emerge from this qualitative assessment of the perspective-taking process were the use of self- (e.g., switching places) and other-information (e.g., targets personal characteristics), of which the former appears to play the central role. Further elements of the perspective-taking process were also identified with the self-information theme. Of these, having experienced a situation similar to that of a target (similar past experience) was found to be a particularly strong aspect of the perspective-taking process and subsequently informed the rationale for the remaining two studies. In view of the findings from Study 1, the second study tested whether past experiences made it easier for participants to take the perspective of another person in a new, but similar situation and the extent to which other aspects, such as switching places with the target, made the perspective-taking process less effortful. Results revealed that similar past experience was the strongest predictor of the ease of the perspective-taking task. Moreover, the extent to which similar past experience increased ease of the perspective-taking process was moderated by the extent to which the participant reflected on that past experience. The final study in this thesis picked up the notion of reflection and examined whether increasing the extent to which an individual engages in self-reflection leads to a concomitant increase in the tendency to take another perspective and the ease with which this can be accomplished. After completion of an intervention program which had a strong focus on self-reflection and understanding of self, there was a noticeable trend for participants to improve on their capacity for self-reflection. The findings also revealed that individuals with a tendency to self-reflect in an insightful and non-ruminative manner demonstrated a similarly high level of general perspective-taking propensity and ease of perspective taking. The studies support the vital role of reflection on similar past experience to that of a target when engaging in perspective taking. This research underscores the importance of examining perspective taking as a process.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 2002. / Includes Organisational Culture Inventory (OCI) and 6 item subscales adapted from the OCI as appendices. Bibliography: leaves 240-255.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-147). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-147). Also available on the Internet.