Coping plays an important role in human adaptation and well-being. However, surprisingly little is currently known about the normative development of coping. The ‘coping families’ framework, outlined by Skinner and colleagues (2003), provides a promising approach to the study of coping in developmental samples. The current examination tested the coping families approach in emerging adults. A total of 425 individuals (63.5% female), aged 18-31 years (M age 25.04 years), were recruited online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to complete questionnaires on demographic information, personality, childhood adversity, stress, coping behaviors in response to an interpersonal problem, mental health, emerging adult identity, substance use behaviors, and competence. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) examined the structure of coping behaviors. Bivariate correlations were used to examine associations between age and coping behaviors, and regression analyses examined associations between coping behaviors and various adaptive and maladaptive outcomes. EFA results yielded partial support for the coping families approach. Correlations between age and coping were not significant, suggesting that there were no meaningful age shifts in coping in the present sample. Lastly, regression analyses suggested that coping behaviors significantly predicted some adaptive and maladaptive outcomes, after statistically accounting for potential confounding variables, such as personality and childhood adversity. Findings are integrated within existing research and implications for applied work are discussed.

Over the past several years, there has been an influx in patients being treated for polytraumatic injuries within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), largely due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also due to advances in life sustaining medical interventions. The polytrauma population includes veterans who have sustained a severe traumatic or non-traumatic brain injury, and a significant loss in cognitive and physical functioning, referred to as a disorder of consciousness. The purpose of the current study was to explore factors related to successful emergence from a disorder of consciousness, using a sample of veterans who were treated at one of the five VA polytrauma rehabilitation center (PRC) sites in an Emerging Consciousness (EC) Program. Participants (N = 70) included both combat and non-combat active duty military personnel and veterans who sustained either a severe traumatic brain injury or anoxic brain injury, and were considered to have a disorder of consciousness at the time of their admission to the EC program. Patient information was retrospectively collected from electronic medical records, and included demographic data, medical information, and scores on the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), Rappaport Coma Near Coma (CNC) Scale, and the JFK Coma Recovery Scale- Revised (CRS-R). In addition, Receiver Operator Characteristic Models (ROC) were utilized to explore “cut scores” for predicting emergence using the CNC and CRS-R. Results showed that age is a significant factor in changes in FIM scores over time, but it did not predict time to emerge or emergence itself. In addition, for the CNC, scores at intake tended to be a better predictor of emergence, while week three scores on the CRS-R were more accurate in determining whether someone would emerge or not. Exploratory analyses also showed a difference in discharge location after treatment based on a patient’s age. Finally, significant variance in initial scores on the CNC was seen for Caucasians, when compared to other ethnic groups. Limitations are explored, along with implications and recommendations for future research and clinical practice.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a significant role in most emerging and developing economies. To increase the probability of survival of their SMEs and achieve sustainable growth, some SME leaders expand their business operations beyond national borders by implementing internationalization strategies. Internationalization is crucial to SME survival. The conceptual framework of this study consisted of a multitheory model including stage model, network theory, and new venture theory. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the strategies that Turkish information communication technology (ICT) SME leaders used to internationalize their business operations. Ten SME leaders, who led a variety of high-tech service SMEs operating in the ICT service sector in Turkey, served as participants for this study. The company documents, reports, and government documents were used to triangulate the interview data. Yin's 5-step method to data analysis resulted in the development of 5 themes: Turkish SME leaders have an active role in internationalization, geographical distance and culture are the 2 main factors of consideration when developing internationalization strategies, managerial attitude supports internationalization, Turkish SME leaders choose low commitment entry methods when entering foreign markets, and relationships is the main source the SME leaders rely on when internationalizing. The findings of this study may help SME leaders to implement successful internationalization strategies to their business operations and achieve sustainable growth of their SMEs, which may contribute to social change by improving both local and host country economies and the well-being of their citizens.

The purpose of this study is to determine how youth and emerging adults use television as a platform to discuss religion and to express their religious, social, and political anxieties. Through a textual, genre, and audience analysis of three case studies--"Supernatural", "Battlestar Galactica", and "Joan of Arcadia"---this paper argues that the apocalypse genre is the most effective for attracting youth and young adult audiences. "Supernatural" and "Battlestar Galactica" each successfully used the apocalypse genre ("Supernatural as a sub-genre of fantasy, and Battlestar Galactica" as a sub-genre of science fiction) and had large young demographics. "Joan of Arcadia" was a teen soap opera/serial drama that used a realism narrative in its portrayal of religion, and was prematurely cancelled because it did not have the young audience that it's network desired. The apocalypse genre is attractive to youth and young adults, because it allows them to express their religious and social anxieties in a way that is less intimidating because the setting does not directly correlate with their society.

Abstract This thesis analyses the stock market synchronicity of 34 emerging markets and compares the findings with seven developed markets. The study uses weekly stock return data and the final dataset includes approximately 20.8 million weekly observations for 40,014 firms across the world. Morck et al. (2000) are among the first to introduce the topic of stock market synchronisation and argue that stock markets in economies with high per capita GDP move in a relatively unsynchronised manner over time, in contrast to stock prices in low per capita GDP economies. They also suggest that stock synchronicity is associated with macroeconomic indicators including rule of law, inflation, corruption and geographical size. In addition, Skaife et al. (2006) propose a further measure of stock synchronicity based on the proportion of zero returns and argue that the zero-return measure is a superior measure of stock market co-movement. The study uses both measures proposed by Morck et al. (2000) and one measure proposed by Skaife et al. (2006) for synchronicity analysis and extends the analysis to cover a ten year period, a larger sample of shares and more recent measures of country specific characteristics. It is found that stock markets in emerging economies are more synchronous than in developed economies over the sample period using the classical measure. It is also found that over the 10-year study period the synchronicity measure is stationary. There is evidence of a statistically significant negative correlation between stock synchronicity and both government accountability and corruption for the emerging markets using the cross-sectional analysis. The R-square measure of stock synchronicity averages 0.091 for the emerging markets and 0.045 for the developed economies, suggesting that higher stock price co-movement is evident in emerging economies. Further, there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the R-square measure and both corruption and inflation. The study also uses the zero-return measure of stock synchronicity suggested by Skaife et al. (2006). It is found that the zero-return measure for emerging economies is higher than for developed economies. Surprisingly, China and the S&P 500 group of companies exhibit the lowest values for the zero-return measure during this period, which is inconsistent with the classical measure and the R-square measure. Further, panel data analysis shows that GDP per capita and trade openness have a strong effect on the zero-return measure. The Pearson correlation and Spearman rank correlation coefficient indicate that the classical measure and the R-square measure are positively correlated and appear to capture similar aspects of the markets in the study, which is also consistent with cross-sectional analysis results. In contrast, the zero-return measure shows either insignificant or negative correlation with the classical measure and the R-square measure for most sub-period and full period analysis. Finally, there is evidence that emerging stock markets are more synchronous over time than in developed financial markets. It is found that common-law country stock synchronicity is lower than in civil-law countries or post-communist countries using the classical measure and the R-square measure.

Widespread support for capital account liberalization in emerging markets has recently shifted to skepticism and even support for capital controls in certain circumstances. This sea-change in attitudes has been bolstered by the inconclusive macroeconomic evidence on the benefits of capital account liberalization. There are several compelling reasons why it is difficult to measure the aggregate impact of capital controls in very different countries. Instead, a new and more promising approach is more detailed microeconomic studies of how capital controls have generated specific distortions in individual countries. Several recent papers have used this approach and examined very different aspects of capital controls - from their impact on crony capitalism in Malaysia and on financing constraints in Chile, to their impact on US multinational behavior and the efficiency of stock market pricing. Each of these diverse studies finds a consistent result: capital controls have significant economic costs and lead to a misallocation of resources. This new microeconomic evidence suggests that capital controls are not just "sand", but rather "mud in the wheels" of market discipline

Group comparison per se is a fundamental task in many scientific endeavours but is also the basis of any classifier. Comparing groups of sequence data is a relevant task. To contrast sequence groups, we define Emerging Sequences (ESs) as subsequences that are frequent in sequences of one group and less frequent in another, and thus distinguishing sequences of different classes. There are two challenges to distinguish sequence classes by ESs: the extraction of ESs is not trivially efficient and only exact matches of sequences are considered. In our work we address those problems by a suffix tree-based framework and a sliding window matching mechanism. A classification model based on ESs is also proposed. Evaluating against several other learning algorithms, the experiments on two datasets show that our similar ESs-based classification model outperforms the baseline approaches. With the ESs' high discriminative power, our proposed model achieves satisfactory F-measures on classifying sequences.

The developmental period of adolescence typically refers to the years between 13 and 19, and is associated with developmental tasks that help youth become young adults. The transition to adulthood is typically recognized by common adulthood benchmarks such as leaving home, finishing school, marriage, financial independence and having children. However, many young men and women attending college remain financially and emotionally dependent on their parents, as they have not entered the professional work ranks and are faced with the challenges of college. Increasingly, colleges and universities are becoming places to help teach young people to become prepared for the professional ranks and engaged with the world that surrounds them. However, very little research in higher education is focused on the developmental benefits associated with the college experience. The purpose of this study was to examine the presence of developmental supports for self-determination and initiative in a student leadership program. Throughout the youth development literature, self-determination and initiative are recognized as important internal capacities that aid young people as they transition to adulthood. These concepts provide the theoretical lens for a qualitative case study of a college leadership group. Data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews, observations, a year end focus group, and supplemented by a review of the organizational instruments and tools they develop. Findings from this study confirm past studies of youth development organizations and extend this work by applying it to the developmental period of emerging adulthood. For the leadership group under investigation, initiative and self-determination were supported primarily through the actions of peers within the group. The experience of student leaders often shaped how the group was led, and these leaders became an important source of support for the basic needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy within the group. The study covers a three-year period, and contrasts how peer leadership changed and impacted group functioning and performance over time. Practical implications of the study relate to the important role of faculty and graduate student advisors in training and monitoring student leaders before these individuals take a formal leadership role for these groups.

Although childhood maltreatment has been established as a risk factor for the development of problematic gambling, there are significant omissions in the literature regarding the investigation of mediating mechanisms underlying this etiological relationship. The purpose of the current study was to examine altered self-capacities (i.e., relationship difficulties, identity disturbances, and affect dysregulation) and gambling motives as mediating mechanisms underlying the link between childhood maltreatment and gambling, in a sample of emerging adults recruited from the community. It was hypothesized that childhood maltreatment would lead to impairments in the aforementioned self-capacities, which would subsequently predict greater endorsement of gambling motives. In turn, gambling motives were hypothesized to predict increased gambling frequency and gambling problems. The results revealed a pattern wherein altered self-capacities mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and gambling motives. However, gambling motives were not observed to mediate the relationship between altered self-capacities and gambling frequency or gambling problems.

Although childhood maltreatment has been established as a risk factor for the development of problematic gambling, there are significant omissions in the literature regarding the investigation of mediating mechanisms underlying this etiological relationship. The purpose of the current study was to examine altered self-capacities (i.e., relationship difficulties, identity disturbances, and affect dysregulation) and gambling motives as mediating mechanisms underlying the link between childhood maltreatment and gambling, in a sample of emerging adults recruited from the community. It was hypothesized that childhood maltreatment would lead to impairments in the aforementioned self-capacities, which would subsequently predict greater endorsement of gambling motives. In turn, gambling motives were hypothesized to predict increased gambling frequency and gambling problems. The results revealed a pattern wherein altered self-capacities mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and gambling motives. However, gambling motives were not observed to mediate the relationship between altered self-capacities and gambling frequency or gambling problems.