This dissertation presents two individual studies aimed at providing insight into the impacts and benefits of participation and involvement in an alternative sport. Thus, the purpose was to monitor and evaluate the authentic sport of quidditch, based on the Harry Potter franchise, and the governing body, the International Quidditch Association (IQA). In Study 1, through a grounded theory approach, I examined the impact and benefits on participants and determined similarities and differences to traditional sport activities. Findings suggest involvement with quidditch provided leadership skills, social gains, increased health and fitness, self-confidence and pride, along with a positive sporting experience, all of which have been recognized in more traditional sports. Further analysis revealed the grassroots component of the sport provided leadership opportunities that organized traditional sport often cannot provide. In Study 2, I furthered my exploration with the sport of quidditch through a grounded theory approach and examined the impact and benefits for volunteers who chose to work for the IQA. Findings suggested the unique atmosphere of quidditch was able to produce an environment that yielded positive impact on the volunteers. It was found that volunteering for the IQA resulted in two themes recognized as a precursor to social capital development: A positive experience within a sport setting and meeting new people and like-minded individuals. Two additional themes, satisfaction and pride, and enhanced job marketability and networking, were found to result in personal gain. As grounded theory methodology suggests, this study aimed to advance substantive theory in regards to alternative sport impact in an effort to assist in the development of formal theory. From a practical standpoint, this dissertation implies the importance of alternative sport endeavors in an effort to reach those whom normally might not be found on the field, court, or ice.

PURPOSE: To generate a theory of the psychosocial processes influencing weight management among persons newly prescribed atypical antipsychotic medications. RESEARCH QUESTIONS: 1. What influences weight management in persons with first-episode psychosis who are newly prescribed atypical antipsychotic medications? 2. How is weight management facilitated in persons with first-episode psychosis who are newly prescribed atypical antipsychotic medications? 3. What psychosocial processes impede weight management in persons with first-episode psychosis who are newly prescribed atypical antipsychotic medications? METHODS: A qualitative, grounded theory research design was used to guide the study. Semi-structured interviews were the method of data collection and analysis was performed using constant comparison. SAMPLE & SETTING: A sample of 10 participants with first-episode psychosis prescribed atypical antipsychotics for at least eight weeks and six participants with a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia who have been taking atypical antipsychotic medication for at least three years were obtained from an Outpatient Psychiatric program using theoretical sampling. FINDINGS: Contextual factors influencing weight management were: accessibility to resources, unstructured lifestyle, and others’ perception of their weight. Conditions influencing weight management were: rapid weight gain, insatiable hunger, and a lack of motivation boosters. Participants’ early responses to actions influencing weight gain management included discontinuing medications, choosing lower calorie foods, using walking in daily activities as exercise, accepting weight gain, and trying to manage weight but giving up. The consequences revealed from data analysis were contemplating weight management and not trying, as the barriers to weight management substantially exceeded the facilitators and many procrastinated in taking on any weight management strategies. CONCLUSION: The theoretical framework developed in this study can assist with the understanding and management of weight gain among this unique population. / Thesis (Master, Nursing) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-06 00:12:11.781

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This thesis examines the impact of governance process development on engagements between onshore and offshore subsidiaries of multinational IT services organisations. Offshoring is a significant global phenomenon. Over the last decade, there has been substantial growth in the number of organisations setting up ‘captive’ (wholly owned subsidiaries) centres in offshore locations. The desired benefits of greater coordination, leveraging and sharing of knowledge have, in many instances, failed to materialise for these IT services organisations. These failures arise from a variety of causes including a lack of intra-organisational processes to coordinate and manage work, weak alignment between the parent organisation’s strategic objectives and those of the subsidiary, and the inability to navigate cross-organisational and cultural barriers. This thesis comprises three interrelated projects. The first established that organisations develop offshore subsidiaries in order to obtain one or more of a number of complex and interrelated set of strategic objectives. The second project, through the use of grounded theory, demonstrates that within one IT services organisation, imposed governance processes do not facilitate communication and engagement between the onshore and offshore subsidiaries. Cross-cultural and organisational differences inhibited the engagement between the subsidiaries, thus contributing to the failure to achieve the desired benefits of offshoring. Organisations engaged in captive offshoring are faced with two apparently contradictory sets of issues: a set of highly desirable and interrelated strategic benefits and a variety of operational challenges that arise from the imposed nature of the governance processes. The third project, a case study of a similar IT services organisation, examines how these apparently contradictory issues were resolved. The results show that it is the co-development and implementation of governance processes based on the informal working practices of both the onshore and offshore teams that enable the operational challenges established in the second project to be resolved and thus provide reconciliation between these and the achievement of the strategic benefits that drive offshoring. This thesis concludes that co-developed and implemented governance processes are a key factor in the mitigation of the deleterious effects of cross-organizational and cultural working and adds the notion of co-development and implementation of governance processes to the academic literature on the governance of outsourcing.

Chronic pain is a public health problem that is likely to increase as the population ages, and has few effective treatments. Although viewed by many as profoundly distressing and disabling, there are a surprising number of people (approximately 30%) who cope well with their chronic pain and do not continue to seek treatment. There is little theory to explain how and why these individuals manage their pain well. This means there is limited knowledge about the approaches used by people who cope well and whether these strategies could help those who have more difficulty. This thesis presents a substantive grounded theory of living well with chronic pain, the theory of re-occupying self. Seventeen individual interviews were recorded, with data collection, analysis and theory generation following classical grounded theory methodological approach. Constant comparison, theoretical sampling, theoretical coding, and theoretical sensitivity were used to identify the main concern of people who cope well with pain. This concern is achieving self-coherence, and is resolved by re-occupying self. Resolution involves making sense to develop an idiographic model of their pain; deciding to turn from patient to person, facilitated or hindered by interactions with clinicians and occupational drive; and flexibly persisting where occupational engaging and coping allow individuals to develop future plans. By completing this process, individuals form a coherent self-concept in which they re-occupy the important or valued aspects of themselves. This study supports using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy because of its functional contextual view of people and their actions. This study illustrates that coping strategies are used in different ways depending on the primary goal within that context. Occupations, or active; purposeful; meaningful; contextualised and human activities, are used by people to make sense of their situation, and as a key motivation for developing coping strategies. These findings lead to new research questions about values-aligned activity, coping with identity change, and acceptance.

This study examines why teachers sometimes struggle to develop caring relationships with their students, despite their intention to do so. To do this, the notion of caring relationships (Mayeroff, 1971) is explored, as well as the influence of teachers’ emotions on these dynamics. The study also examines environmental factors in schools that influence caring teacher-student relationships. In all, fourteen teachers with early, middle, and senior years experience participated in two focus-groups each, and seven of these participants were interviewed individually. Because this study adopts a grounded theory approach, the coding of data is foundational to the data analysis. More specifically, open (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser, 1978), focused (Charmaz, 2006), and selective coding (Glaser, 1978) are used to identify the emergent categories in the data, and how they interrelate with each other. Theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser, 1978) is used to link emergent categories to extant literature to further develop the study’s conceptualization. The findings suggest that teachers’ emotions and more specifically, fear, guilt, and shame, reflect the dissonance that they sometimes experience as they align their idealized views of themselves with their roles in their teaching (McCall & Simmons, 1978). Building on earlier work by Beijaard (1995) and Nias (1989, 1996), this study’s findings suggest that teachers rely primarily on their students to gauge their success in their role and their identities as teachers. Also, teachers’ competitive relationships with their colleagues often reflect their unintentional attempts to protect their relationships with students from the influences of other adults, so as to safeguard their students as their primary source of role support. This not only raises questions about the caring nature of teachers’ relationships with their students (Mayeroff, 1971), but it also underscores the fact that teachers’ collaboration in schools is frequently superficial in quality. This study also suggests that teachers tend to isolate themselves in their classrooms and have little awareness of how their responses to their emotions in teaching influence their caring relationships with students. Finally, the findings indicate that school administrators can act as important role support for teachers as they develop caring relationships with their students.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka, analysera och därmed bidra med kunskap om vilket meningsskapande som fritidshemsbarn anger kan ske på oredigerade platser utomhus kring fritidshem. Forskningsfrågorna som studien behandlar är hur fritidshemsbarns meningsskapande kan beskrivas och studeras på oredigerade platser utomhus samt vad fritidshemsbarn berättar att de gör på oredigerade platser utomhus som kan sättas i relation till deras meningsskapande. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkter är ett sociokulturellt perspektiv och fritidshemsbarns perspektiv. En forskare som är intresserad av att försöka förstå vad som händer på ett specifikt forskningsområde kan använda metodansatsen Grounded Theory. Datamaterialet består av 17 samtalspromenader med fritidshemsbarn från fyra olika fritidshem. Fritidshemsbarnet tar två bilder på vad han/hon betraktade som en oredigerad plats. I datainsamlingen ingår också fältanteckningar från två observationer med två olika barngrupper på fritidshem. Fritidshemmen ligger i tre olika kommuner isödra delen av Sverige. Studien är ett kunskapsbidrag till den pedagogiska praktiken samt till forskningen om vad fritidshemsbarn gör på oredigeradeplatser utomhus kring fritidshem. Jag har med Grounded Theory skapat en grundad teoretisk modell över studiens resultat. Studiens resultat utifrån Grounded Theorys analys visar att fritidshemsbarns meningsskapande är både konstruktivt och utvecklande på oredigerade platser. Analysen ledde fram till kärnkategorin, Lekpräglad plats. Det innebar att oredigerade platser gav studiens fritidshemsbarn lekvärden när de utövar sina aktiviteter. Fritidshemsbarn berättar att de leker både traditionella lekar, temalekar och egna fantasifrigörande lekar. Fem underkategorier skapades som har olika egenskaper och relationer i förhållande till kärnkategorin. Underkategorierna är frigörande plats, aktiverande plats, rörelseutmanande plats, känslorik plats och plats för naturassociationer. Studiens slutsats belyser att studiens fritidshemsbarns lekvärld finns på oredigerade platser utomhus och leken kan främjas där samt att dessa platser är lek viktiga för dem. Fritidshemsbarn bör ha tillgång till oredigerade platser utomhus kring fritidshem eftersom olika platser ger olika meningserbjudanden. / <p>Masteruppsats på 15hp inom Masterprogrammet inom utbildningsvetenskapligt område med examen i Pedagogik med utomhusdidaktisk inriktning.</p>

Det övergripande syftet för denna licentiatuppsats är att utforska psykoterapeuters och patienters tankar om vad som är verksamt i individuell psykoterapi med fokus på deras egna erfarenheter av psykoterapeutiskt arbete. Som metod för datainsamling och analys valdes grounded theory i båda de ingående studierna. I studie 1 intervjuades psykoterapeuter, legitimerade för individuell psykoterapi. Sammanlagt nio informanter deltog i studien, både män och kvinnor med olika yrkesbakgrund och med olika psykoterapeutisk inriktning. Ett centralt begrepp, förnyande erfarenhet, utvecklades ur data. Förnyande erfarenhet är en process där terapeuten och patienten i samarbete och dialog försöker att skapa situationer där patienten gör erfarenheter som ifrågasätter eller utmanar tidigare erfarenheter som patienten har eller ger ett nytt perspektiv på tidigare erfarenheter som gör dem mer begripliga och hanterbara. Förnyande erfarenhet leder till att patientens upplevelsevärld och beteende förändras i riktning mot ett ökat psykiskt välbefinnande. I studie 2 intervjuades åtta personer som gått i individuell psykoterapi av olika längd och teoretisk inriktning hos legitimerad psykoterapeut. De bidrog med data om sexton psykoterapier eftersom flera av dem hade erfarenhet av mer än en psykoterapi. Det centrala begrepp som utvecklades ur data var terapeutens lyhörda acceptans. Lyhördhet innebär att terapeuten har en förmåga att visa sig känslig för patientens behov och känslomässiga tillstånd och att ge gensvar på ett adekvat och konstruktivt sätt. Acceptans representerar en stödjande och icke-dömande atmosfär och terapeutens tolerans, välvilja och förstående inställning. / The overall aim of this licentiate thesis is to explore psychotherapists’ and patients’ thoughts about what is effective in individual psychotherapy, focusing on their own experience of psychotherapeutic work. The method chosen for data collection and analysis was grounded theory in both the included studies. In Study 1 psychotherapists, licensed for individual psychotherapy were interviewed. A total of nine informants participated in the study, both men and women with different professional backgrounds and with different psychotherapeutic approaches. A core concept, Renewing experience, was developed from the data. Renewing experience is a process where the therapist and patient in cooperation and dialogue are trying to create situations where the patient makes new experiences. These experiences call into question or challenge past experiences of the patient or gives a new perspective on past experiences that make them more understandable and manageable. Renewing experience leads to changes in the patients experiential world and behaviour that increase psychological well-being. In Study 2 eight persons were interviewed who have attended individual psychotherapy of various lengths and theoretical orientation with a licensed psychotherapist. They contributed data on sixteen psychotherapies as several of them had experience of more than one psychotherapy. The core concept that evolved from the data was The therapist's responsive acceptance. Responsiveness means that the therapist has the ability to prove sensitive to patient's needs and emotional states and to provide feedback in an appropriate and constructive manner. Acceptance represents a supportive and non-judgmental atmosphere and the therapist's tolerance, kindness and understanding attitude. / <p>Vid tidpunkten för licentiatseminariet var delarbete 2 ej utgivet (i manuskriptform).</p>

The Nordic countries have been assisting the Baltic countries in their public health (PH) development from early nineties. The study describes PH development in Lithuania alongside with the BRIMHEALTH PH training programme. The study aimed at a qualitative assessment of the programme’s implications in Lithuanian partner institutions. The grounded theory method was used in the analysis of the focus group interview and nine in-depth interviews. The subjective meaning attributed to the programme by its participants was summarized in the following five descriptive categories: international postgraduate students feel welcome in BRIMHEALTH (as the core category); providing assistance; building partnerships; being an experimental programme; BRIMHEALTH as a model. The core category focussed on the student, as the main actor. Each category is related to several subcategories. A constant comparative approach was applied to describe the thoughts and values of the participants. The concepts and categories were validated in the data. It was concluded that the study evaluates the impact of the BRIMHEALTH training programme, proving that PH training was connected to training abroad and international collaboration; the importance of the programme is assessed from a number of perspectives and can be helpful for further research. / <p>ISBN 978-91-85721-12-2</p>

Thesis (Ph.D. (English)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.