Child support is a means to financially support children, yet fewer than half of children eligible for child support receive full payment, with many receiving none. Child support nonpayment is a national concern that has led to negative repercussions for non-intact families, the community, and economic system. In some cases, noncustodial parents have an inability to pay. The purpose of this descriptive, phenomenological study was to understand custodial parental perceptions and experiences of noncustodial parent's inability to pay their child support. Social learning theory served as the conceptual framework for the study. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 10 custodial parents ranging in age from 18 to 45 who had an active child support case enforced by a Domestic Relations Office in the northeastern United States but were not receiving payments due to the noncustodial parent's inability to pay. Audiotaped interviews were manually transcribed and coded for themes using a typology organization structure. Coding was based on key terms, word repetitions, and metaphors. Member checking and audit trails were used to establish the trustworthiness of the data. The findings revealed that many custodial parents did not trust that the noncustodial parent was being truthful in their claims of having a true inability to pay. Other custodial parents believed that the noncustodial parent could make more attempts to try to assist the custodial parent in the absence of financial support. The findings of this study may contribute to social change by advancing knowledge and policies within the child support system. Likewise, findings may assist caseworkers and clinicians in better understanding their client's experiences and challenges resulting in a better client service experience.

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Yes / The purpose of this article is To foster entrepreneurship among students and incubate more start-ups for economic prosperity, universities around the globe are required to play a key role in terms of developing an overall conducive eco-system for student fraternity. Some previous studies have analyzed student entrepreneurship and the effect of entrepreneurship courses. However, the role of university as provider and enabler of entrepreneurial environment and its impact on entrepreneurial intent among student has not studied in a cross-cultural context. Considering this, the present study seeks to examine the critical role played by university in fostering entrepreneurial intention among post-graduate students. For the said purpose, researcher has taken the broader framework suggested by Kraaijenbrink et al. (2010) to understand university environment and Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1975) to measure entrepreneurial intention and it’s antecedents among the sample of final year post-graduate management students of India, Malaysia and Singapore. The total sample size is 1097. The data has been analysed with the help of Exploratory Factor analysis, MANOVA and Structural Equation Modeling. Two factors that emerged out of analysis in relation to university environment and support were: a) Targeted cognitive and non-cognitive support and b) General educational support. With the help of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), an attempt was made to find the relationship between these two factors and entrepreneurial intention. It was found that university environment and support has significantly positive relationship with perceived behavioural control. With the help of MANOVA, it was found that there is statistically significant difference between perceived university environment and support factors among the students of India, Singapore and Malaysia. With this, it was also found that for both the factors, the highest mean score was found among the students of Malaysia, followed by the students of Singapore and India. The study has closely examined role played by University environment and support to foster entrepreneurship among young students. The findings of the study can be used by post-graduate educational institute to design pedagogy, create enabling entrepreneurship support system and work towards becoming an entrepreneurial university.

A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual study was conducted to explore and describe the experience and support received by newly-qualified four-year trained professional nurses while placed for remunerated community service in Gauteng province. Purposive sampling was used and five focus group interviews were conducted. Each focus group consisted of six to ten participants who had completed the four-year training programme and were qualified as nurses (general, psychiatric and community) and midwife placed for remunerated community service in Gauteng province (South African Nursing Council R425 of 22 February 1985). Data was analysed using Tesch’s method of data analysis. Two main themes emerged from the study and formed the basis of the discussion. The themes are “various experiences of the newly-qualified four-year trained professional nurses” and “support received by the newly-qualified four-year trained professional nurses”. Community service nurses reported mixed experiences such as feeling good and bad during community service placement. The majority of participants reported that remunerated community service placement is risky and it requires one to take chances. Furthermore, participants referred to remunerated community service placement as a scary venture at first but eventually they mastered practical activities. Support received by community service nurses varied from adequate, inadequate, incidental and lack of support. Community service nurses reported bad staff attitudes, severe staff shortage and that they were subjected to adverse events and low salaries. Recommendations to enhance community service placement were outlined for the following stakeholders: South African Nursing Council, Department of Health, nursing colleges, universities and managers of the health facilities. Copyright / Dissertation (MCur)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Nursing Science / unrestricted

Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional stress-strain-coping theory provides the theoretical background for the present thesis. This theory proposes that strain (i.e., burnout) occurs when demands (i.e., work stressors) exceed coping resources (e.g., social support). The current thesis explores the influence of social support on the stress-burnout relationship in nurses. A sample of Australian nurses working across three public hospitals in Brisbane's metropolitan district were recruited to investigate the nature and level of burnout experienced by nurses. Burnout is characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment. The present research addresses gaps in the empirical literature by investigating the key work stressors experienced by Australian nurses and by establishing nurses' referent levels of work stress, social support, and burnout. In addition, the research explores the complex relationships between work stress, social support and burnout. The majority of nursing studies have failed to consider how support from within the nurses' work environment mitigates burnout. The present research builds upon previous nursing literature by examining the "main&qout; and "buffering" effect hypotheses. Studies have consistently found support for the main effect model, however the hypothesis that social support buffers the negative effects of stress has resulted in highly conflicting findings. Some theorists (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Cutrona & Russell, 1990) propose that the buffering effects of social support will only be found if there is an adequate match between the needs elicited by the stressful event and the type of support an individual receives. The present study extends the stress or support matching theory by exploring the matching between specific types of stressors to specific types (i.e., emotional and instrumental) and sources (i.e.,supervisor and coworkers) of support. Cutrona (1990) suggests that the controllability of a stressor is the primary dimension in determining an appropriate match between stressors and types of support. Cutrona proposes that controllable stressful events elicit needs for instrumental support and uncontrollable events elicit needs for emotional support. Heeding Cutrona's advice, independent raters classified nurses' work stressors as controllable or uncontrollable stressful events prior to investigating the stressor-support matching theory. Three sequential studies were undertaken to explore the variables of interest to this research program. In Study 1, focus groups were conducted with 68 nurses (11 males, 34 females) from two public hospitals. The qualitative data was subjected to content analysis. The findings revealed that Australian nurses are exposed to a range of job-specific stressors (i.e., Job Conditions, Job Uncertainty, Interpersonal Conflict and a Lack of Professional Recognition and Support) and generic role stressors (i.e., Role Overload, Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity). The findings prompted the research to utilise Wolfgang's (1988) Health Professions Stress Inventory to measure nurses' job-specific stressors and Osipow and Spokane's (1987) Occupational Roles Questionnaire to measure nurses' role stressors in Study 2. The findings from Study 1 also confirmed that the way nurses perceive work support is consistent with current social support literature. Nurses indicated that their two main sources of support were their coworkers and their supervisor. Furthermore, nurses discussed social support from a multidimensional perspective, recognising different types of support that were broadly classified as emotional and instrumental support. Based on these findings, the researcher developed a work support measure specifically for the purpose of this research. Items were taken from established social support scales and were slightly modified to ensure that they were contextually relevant to nurses. In Study 2, 273 nurses (38 males, 235 females) completed a multi-measure questionnaire. While there was sufficient research evidence to indicate that the Occupational Roles Questionnaire (Osipow & Spokane, 1987) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996) possess adequate levels of reliability and validity, less was known about Wolfgang's Health Professions Stress Inventory and the work support scales designed for this research program. Factor analysis of the Health Professions Stress Inventory revealed a four-factor solution: Lack of Professional Recognition and Support, Patient Care Uncertainty, Job Conditions, and Interpersonal Conflict. Cronbach's coefficient alphas ranged from .62 to .83. Factor analysis of the Coworker Support Scale revealed a two-factor solution, representing emotional and instrumental support. Cronbach's coefficient alphas for the Emotional Coworker Support and Instrumental Coworker Support were .92 and .88 respectively. Contrary to expectations, factor analysis of the Supervisor Support Scale revealed a one-factor solution. It was therefore deemed appropriate to examine Supervisor Support as a unidimensional construct in subsequent analyses. Cronbach's coefficient alpha for the Supervisor Support scale was .96. Overall, the results from Study 2 provided supporting evidence to suggest that the measures used in the current research program were psychometrically sound. In Study 3, the data collected in Study 2 was subjected to further statistical analysis. The findings from Study 3 indicated that overall, the sample of Australian nurses reported low to moderate levels of work stress, moderate levels of work support and moderately high levels of burnout. For Emotional Exhaustion, predictor variables accounted for 42.2% of the total variance. Sociodemographic factors explained a small but significant proportion of the variance (2.7%). Work stressors however, were the main predictors of Emotional Exhaustion, explaining 41.5% of the total variance. Role Overload, Job Conditions and Role Conflict were the main determinants of Emotional Exhaustion, with Role Overload explaining most of the variance. For Depersonalisation, the predictor variables accounted for 34.2% of the total variance. Sociodemographic factors (11.5%) and work stressors (33.6%) both explained a significant proportion of the variance. Role Conflict and Patient Care Uncertainty were the main determinants of Depersonalisation, with Role Conflict explaining most of the variance. For Personal Accomplishment, Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity explained 20.5% of the total variance, with Role Conflict explaining most of the variance. Sociodemographic factors and job-specific stressors were not significant Predictors of Personal Accomplishment. Evidence for main effects of work support on burnout were limited. There was no evidence to suggest that work support had significant main effects on Emotional Exhaustion. Supervisor Support had a small, but significant main effect on Depersonalisation (â = -.15, p < .05) and Personal Accomplishment (â = -.24, p < .01). There was no evidence of main effects for Emotional and Instrumental Coworker Support. Furthermore, the present research found no significant evidence to support the buffering effect of work support on burnout. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The aim of this thesis was to examine the association between family structures and adolescents' externalising and internalising problems. This study also explored if adolescents' perceived parental support and teacher support might differ across different type of family structures. It further assessed whether the association between family structures, externalising and internalising problems among adolescents might be attributed to the individual level of parental and teacher support. The data was derived from the Stockholm School Survey carried out by the Stockholm City Administration in 2014. A total of 5,569 students age 15-17 from both public and private schools in the municipalities of Stockholm was included in this study. This study showed that lower perceived parental and teacher support was found among those living in stepparents and single parent families. Results from linear regression also indicated that adolescents from non-nuclear families were at higher risk of developing externalising and internalising problems. As this study found that those associations were attributed to individual level of parental and teacher support, the findings of this thesis bring together the evidence on the need for spesific programs given by the school for prevention and intervention of externalising and internalising problems among adolescents. Moreover, this study also highlights the importance of family policy as an instrument to attain a healthy work-life balance that may enable parents to increase their support towards their children.

The mobile phone has been regarded as one of the most significant inventions in the field of communications and information technology over the past decade. Due to the rapid growth of mobile phone subscribers, hundreds of phone models have been introduced. Therefore, customers may find it difficult to select the most appropriate mobile phone because of information overload. The aim of this study is to investigate web support for customers who are selecting a mobile phone. Firstly, all the models of mobile phones in the New Zealand market were identified by visiting shops and local websites. Secondly, a list of all the features of these mobile phones was collated from local shops, websites and magazines. This list was categorised into mobile phone properties and performance criteria. An experiment then compared three different selection support methods: A (mobile phone catalogue), B (mobile phone property selection) and C (mobile phone property and performance criteria selection). The results of the experiment revealed that selection support methods B and C had higher overall satisfaction ratings than selection support method A; both methods B and C had similar satisfaction ratings. The results also suggested that males and females select their mobile phones differently, though there was no gender preference in selection support methods.

In recent years, studies have discussed the abusive supervision behavior in the organizations. Especially, supervisors¡¦ abusive supervision behaviors were believed to have negative effects on subordinates. However, the relationship between supervisors¡¦ abusive supervision behaviors, subordinates¡¦ work-family conflict, and deviant behavior remained unclear. For this reason, this study intends correlating supervisors¡¦ abusive supervision behaviors and subordinates¡¦ work-family conflict with deviant behavior. In this study, abusive supervision is the independent variable; Deviant behavior is the dependent variable; Work-family conflict is the mediator. Besides, we defined social support (family-supportive policies, perceived organizational work¡Vfamily support, and perceived coworker support) as a moderator not only between supervisors¡¦ abusive supervision behaviors and subordinates¡¦ work-family conflict, but also between work-family conflict and deviant behavior. The subjects of the study who are selected by convenience sampling and the data are collected using dyad-approach are common enterprise employees from manufacturing, high-tech industry, and service industry in Taiwan. Two hundred and twelve effective questionnaires (106 supervisor-subordinate dyadic data) of the survey are retrieved. Moreover, the analytic tools such as descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), linear structural relation, hierarchical regression analysis, and sobel test are utilized to analyze the result of the survey and to verify the assumptions of the study. The findings of the study are as follows. (1) Abusive supervision correlates positively with work-family conflict. (2) Work-family conflict also has significantly positive correlation with deviant behavior. (3) Mediating effect of work-family conflict is significant. (4) Family-supportive policies moderate the relationship between Abusive supervision and work-family conflict. The findings highly support the hypothesis I made, and also testify some researcher¡¦s suggestions. Further from this research, I also offer some suggestions for management and practice to the issue and following related research.

In group decision support systems, understanding the roles, dynamics and relationships between participants is imperative to streamlining the decision-making process. This is especially true when decision makers have varying interests. Research has shown that decision-making processes amongst groups with varying interests will often reach bottlenecks with issues, such as unwillingness to share information, or a limited ability of the participants to share ideas at the same time. We explored this research territory of group decision-making by implementing collaboration software to support Ocean Summits, a new approach that uses real-time simulations as part of the decision-making process for stakeholders to explore fisheries management policies. The research reported in this thesis has three goals: (1) to better understand the decision-making process in fisheries management, (2) to build a prototype system to tackle the major issues in the decision-making process and (3) to determine the best way to share and display information critical to the stakeholders' decision-making process by exploring the use of shared screens and information in comparison to private displays. We discovered that the use of shared screens with shared information yielded the best results, as opposed to private screens with shared information or private screens with private information. It was observed that sharing information allowed participants to explore more alternative solutions.