Although it has been argued that indoor workers in fact make up the majority of the sex industry, most of the literature on the transition out of sex work has looked at street-based workers. This interview-based qualitative research project aims to fill that gap. As such, this thesis examines the trajectories, challenges and strategies of women who transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from criminalized indoor sex work (escorting, erotic massage and domination) to the mainstream labour market. Using Ebaugh’s role exit theory and Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma, intersectional feminist analysis and labour theory, I position the transition as a re-negotiation of self, involving conflicts in identity and class location. My findings suggest that the transition out of sex work is characterized by multiple, parallel work trajectories, wherein the women were successfully able to transfer skills they had acquired in sex work to the mainstream labour market.

Although it has been argued that indoor workers in fact make up the majority of the sex industry, most of the literature on the transition out of sex work has looked at street-based workers. This interview-based qualitative research project aims to fill that gap. As such, this thesis examines the trajectories, challenges and strategies of women who transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from criminalized indoor sex work (escorting, erotic massage and domination) to the mainstream labour market. Using Ebaugh’s role exit theory and Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma, intersectional feminist analysis and labour theory, I position the transition as a re-negotiation of self, involving conflicts in identity and class location. My findings suggest that the transition out of sex work is characterized by multiple, parallel work trajectories, wherein the women were successfully able to transfer skills they had acquired in sex work to the mainstream labour market.

Although it has been argued that indoor workers in fact make up the majority of the sex industry, most of the literature on the transition out of sex work has looked at street-based workers. This interview-based qualitative research project aims to fill that gap. As such, this thesis examines the trajectories, challenges and strategies of women who transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from criminalized indoor sex work (escorting, erotic massage and domination) to the mainstream labour market. Using Ebaugh’s role exit theory and Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma, intersectional feminist analysis and labour theory, I position the transition as a re-negotiation of self, involving conflicts in identity and class location. My findings suggest that the transition out of sex work is characterized by multiple, parallel work trajectories, wherein the women were successfully able to transfer skills they had acquired in sex work to the mainstream labour market.

Although it has been argued that indoor workers in fact make up the majority of the sex industry, most of the literature on the transition out of sex work has looked at street-based workers. This interview-based qualitative research project aims to fill that gap. As such, this thesis examines the trajectories, challenges and strategies of women who transitioned or are in the process of transitioning from criminalized indoor sex work (escorting, erotic massage and domination) to the mainstream labour market. Using Ebaugh’s role exit theory and Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma, intersectional feminist analysis and labour theory, I position the transition as a re-negotiation of self, involving conflicts in identity and class location. My findings suggest that the transition out of sex work is characterized by multiple, parallel work trajectories, wherein the women were successfully able to transfer skills they had acquired in sex work to the mainstream labour market.

This thesis reports a study of the impact of work placements on the transferable skills of engineering students. The thesis provides a review of the theoretical and empirical literature in the field of student work placements and transferable skills and provides a discussion of the measurement of impact in this field. It also describes the design of the study, methods of data collection and the data analyses used. The research project was carried out at Loughborough University from 2005 – 2008. The data was collected from 247 students and 5 DIS (Diploma in Industrial Studies) tutors from three engineering departments (Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering and the Institute of Polymer Technology and Materials Engineering (IPTME)) and 26 line managers from 19 different companies which take students on placements. The results shows that the overwhelming majority of the students valued work placements as a way of developing transferable skills and identified the transferable skills which work placements were most likely and least likely to develop. There was close agreement on these matters between students who had experienced placements and those that had not. All DIS tutors and 87% of the line managers interviewed considered that a work placement had a very strong or strong impact upon the transferable skills of the students. Triangulation of the responses by students, tutors and line managers revealed close agreement on these matters. Students, tutors and line managers had mixed opinions whether work placements would improve degree results. In fact, work placement students performed significantly better in degree examinations than non work placement students. The tutors and line managers stressed particularly that work placements increased the confidence and maturity of the students. They suggested holiday work, summer work, team based projects as a part of the University degree courses as alternative ways of helping the students who are not doing work placements to acquire and improve their transferable skills, although they did not think that these suggested alternatives will be as effective as the one year placement. They considered that the duration of the work experience period is a key factor in improving transferable skills.

The conflict in Afghanistan which has predominated much of the first decade of the new millennium has resulted in the creation of a new generation of Canadian war veterans. This veteran culture will include Canadian military personnel who were either directly or indirectly involved in active peacekeeping duty during their careers. Some of these men and women choose retirement to pursue other interests or second careers in the civilian world. Others are facing involuntary early retirement due to permanent medical or combat-related stress factors, such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Medical release, in combination with age and socioeconomic circumstances can result in adjustment difficulties (Sweet, Stoler, Kelter, & Thurrell, 1989; Westwood, Black & McLean, 2002). A qualitative study of the experiences of ten Canadian soldiers in transition from military life to civilian education environments over a three-month period from November, 2011 to February, 2012 was carried out. The following themes emerged as major areas of discussion: transition issues, unanticipated transitions and non-events, camaraderie and the veteran identity, transferable skills, and support and resources. The transition model developed by Schlossberg and presented by Goodman, Schlossberg, and Anderson (2006) was used as a guiding theory to develop an understanding of the transition experience in reference to this new population of Canadian military veterans. Theories of cross-cultural transition were used as a framework for discussion. Recommendations for facilitating transition through education for Canadian soldiers are included. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2012-04-23 17:09:52.269

Between 2000 and 2011, the United States suffered the loss of manufacturing jobs 6 times faster than the rate in the 20 years prior. North Carolina ranked first in manufacturing employment in 1992; however, in 2012 it ranked fourth. The loss of manufacturing jobs created a trend away from manufacturing industries to services industries. The purpose of this study was to explore strategies that nonmanufacturing managers use to facilitate the transferable skills of displaced manufacturing workers to nonmanufacturing industries. To address the problem, a purposeful sample of 3 nonmanufacturing managers in service industries was obtained from a major manufacturing city in North Carolina. The human capital theory was used as a conceptual framework. Data for this case study were collected from face-to-face, semistructured interviews and review of company documents. Data were coded and analyzed using a qualitative analysis software to identify recurring themes. The 4 prominent themes that emerged were: (a) characteristics that displaced manufacturing workers possessed for employment in service industries, (b) workers' willingness to obtain training and education, (c) managers' specific strategies, skills, and experience for hiring displaced manufacturing workers, and (d) workers' transferable skills. The findings from this study could contribute to social change by defining strategies nonmanufacturing leaders could use to identify and transfer skills from displaced manufacturing workers to nonmanufacturing labor sectors, thereby introducing transferable skills for diverse labor sectors for increasing employment and increasing the standards of living for employees and families.

Do the factors that help students attain desirable outcomes in university transfer to help them attain desirable outcomes upon work entry? The overarching goal of this dissertation is to examine the role of coping in helping university students and recent graduates maintain positive levels of achievement and psychological adjustment during the short- and long-term pursuit of their academic and career goals. Based on the extant literature on stress and coping, three studies document the achievement and psychological adjustment of young adults along theoretically relevant time points in their academic and career development. Study 1 builds on prior findings from Chamandy and Gaudreau (2019) by bridging the academic and career strivings of 550 university students across two examination periods to consider the domain specificity and changing nature of the coping process. We first examined the contemporaneous interplay between perceived control, coping, goal progress, and burnout in both the academic and career domains. We then examined if these patterns translated at the longitudinal level. Results indicated that earlier coping predicted change in goal progress, but not in burnout, in both domains. In the career domain, earlier goal progress also predicted change in task-oriented coping, thus revealing a bidirectional effect. No cross-domain effects were supported. Overall, the associations between coping, goal progress, and burnout differed both within and across time and contexts. Study 2 re-examined these associations among employees who had recently gone through the transition to work. In a two-wave longitudinal study, a sample of 153 recent graduates completed measures of appraisal, coping, goal progress, satisfaction, and burnout while retrospectively assessing their past experiences as university students and their current experiences at work. Results indicated that task-oriented coping in school was related to greater change in goal progress and satisfaction from school to work, whereas disengagement-oriented coping was related to greater change in burnout and to lower change in satisfaction. In turn, change in task-oriented coping was related to lower work burnout, whereas change in disengagement-oriented coping was related to greater change in work burnout and to lower change in work satisfaction. The findings also revealed bidirectional effects across school and work. Finally, graduation grades were shown to be useful but insufficient for our understanding of successful adaptation in the workplace, thus proving new insights on the psychological mechanisms involved in both the successful transition from university to work and the short-term adaptation of recent graduates at work. Study 3 takes a novel perspective on the experience of university students by testing a coping intervention involving hypothetic impediments to the pursuit of their career goals. In a two-wave randomized controlled study, 275 university students completed measures of transition-related controllability appraisals and school-related coping, satisfaction, burnout, and goal progress. The experimental condition elicited self-regulatory benefits by demonstrating group differences in the growth, decline, and follow-up levels, as well as in some of the associations between the intercepts and slopes of controllability appraisals, coping, satisfaction, and burnout. These findings indicate that a coping intervention can improve students’ perception of the transition to work and promote a more positive university experience. This thesis provided new knowledge on the role of coping in offering an advantage to university students on the job market beyond its role in facilitating goal progress and psychological adjustment. Our work opens the door to a long-term research agenda deemed necessary for practitioners and administrators with regards to the role of coping processes in the lives of university students during and beyond their post-secondary education. As a whole, the current dissertation makes theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the coping and transition literature in social, educational, and organizational psychology.

The focus of this study was a problem identified by human resources directors and managers in a medium sized community in the southeast of the United States. The problem was that some college graduates are not equipped with the necessary soft skills to be successful in the workforce. Executive directors and human resources managers brought this problem to the attention of the career center directors in the community. Goleman's theory of emotional intelligence was the theoretical framework to ground this study. This study involved purposeful sampling to select 9 human resources directors from local companies. To investigate soft skills in college graduates, these 9 human resources directors and managers responded to a semi structured interview with questions focusing on the problem of the study. Once the interviews were transcribed, the information was analyzed by using manual coding and computer-assisted coding. Among the 6 themes that emerged from the data analysis, participants most often pointed out communications as the most important soft skill and the foundation for other skills. From the perspective of human resources directors and managers, soft skills were found to be lacking in some college graduates. There was a consensus among the participants of the study that higher education leaders need to incorporate different approaches to teach skills; therefore, a 24-hour professional development program for faculty was developed as a solution for improving the learning of soft skills of college students. The social change expected from having well-equipped college graduates with soft skills will be more successful professionals with better opportunities to have upward mobility, and more meaningful careers that will benefit their families and their organizations.

Tornando da uno studio all’estero, gli studenti fanno spesso riferimento all'esperienza usando aggettivi superlativi e potenti: "fantastico", "la migliore", "che cambia la vita". Tuttavia, quando si tratta di parlare con potenziali datori di lavoro, in genere non sono in grado di articolare le conoscenze e le competenze che hanno acquisito, in modi che abbiano rilevanza per il posto di lavoro o che i datori di lavoro possano apprezzare appieno. Questo studio ha valutato l'impatto di una sessione di riflessione facilitata da educatori sulla capacità degli studenti di migliorare la qualità del modo in cui parlano dello sviluppo individuale di competenze all'estero. E’ stato utilizzato un disegno di ricerca con misurazioni ripetute; un sondaggio pre e post sessione ha valutato l’effetto di una sessione di intervento facilitata di un'ora a cui hanno partecipato studenti universitari statunitensi ed europei che avevano studiato all'estero per almeno un semestre accademico; un gruppo di controllo ha completato i due sondaggi a distanza di una settimana senza partecipare alla sessione. In entrambi i sondaggi, è stato chiesto agli studenti di riflettere sulla propria esperienza per identificare le competenze dimostrate all'estero e di fornire un esempio (creando un racconto basato sulla formula STAR). La previsione era che la capacità auto-percepita degli studenti di (1) riflettere e (2) identificare le competenze, e di (3) acquisire fiducia e (4) mostrare preparazione in previsione di colloqui di lavoro sarebbe aumentata post-intervento (sessione). Questi quattro fattori costituiscono la misura di valutazione, basata sulle risposte a quattro dichiarazioni valutate su una scala Likert a 7 passi. Una seconda previsione anticipava un aumento della qualità delle storie dei soggetti post-intervento (usando una rubrica di 5 livelli per la valutazione), a seguito cioè dell’apprendimento di una migliore pratica per rispondere alle domande del colloquio di lavoro (la formula STAR). In linea con le previsioni, i risultati hanno supportato un miglioramento post-intervento della percezione degli studenti rispetto alla propria capacità di riflettere e identificare competenze, sulla propria fiducia e sul livello percepito di preparazione in previsione dei colloqui di lavoro post- laurea. Per il gruppo di controllo non si è osservato alcun cambiamento dalla condizione PRE a quella POST, mentre si è osservato un significativo aumento dei punteggi PRE-POST per il gruppo sperimentale. Nel confronto tra gruppi, non sono state osservate differenze tra il gruppo di controllo e sperimentale pre-intervento (sostenendo così omogeneità tra gruppi). Tuttavia, sono state trovate differenze significative tra i gruppi post-intervento, con un sostanziale aumento dei punteggi di valutazione per il gruppo sperimentale sulle quattro dimensioni della Misura di Valutazione (Assessment Measure) rispetto al gruppo di controllo. I risultati hanno inoltre confermato la seconda ipotesi secondo la quale il gruppo sperimentale avrebbe mostrato un aumento significativo della qualità delle storie a seguito dell'intervento rispetto al gruppo di controllo, il quale ha mostrato una leggera diminuzione dei punteggi dal pre al post sondaggio. Questo studio fornisce evidenza a sostegno degli sforzi di coloro che nell’educazione terziaria gestiscono programmi simili alla sessione di riflessione (intervento) valutata in questa ricerca e che stimolano gli studenti a riflettere sullo sviluppo delle competenze acquisite durante periodi di studio o lavoro all’estero e ad imparare a parlarne in un modo che verrà apprezzato dai potenziali datori di lavoro durante i colloqui. Questo studio evidenzia inoltre il contributo della mobilità studentesca internazionale rispetto all’incremento dell’employability dei partecipanti. / Students returned from studying abroad often refer to the experience in superlatives and powerful adjectives – “awesome” “the greatest”, “life-changing.” However, when it comes to talking with potential employers, they typically cannot articulate the knowledge and skills they gained in ways that have relevance to the workplace, or that employers can fully appreciate. This study assessed the impact of a facilitated reflection session on students’ ability to increase the quality in how they speak about having developed skills abroad. Using a repeated measures design, a pre- and post-session survey was tied to a one-hour facilitated intervention session attended by U.S. and European undergraduates who had studied abroad at least one academic semester; a control group completed the two surveys a week apart without attending a session. In both surveys, students were asked to reflect upon their experience to identify skill(s) demonstrated abroad and to offer an example (by crafting a short story based on the STAR formula). The prediction was that students’ self-perceived ability to (1) reflect upon and (2) identify skills, and to (3) gain confidence and (4) show preparedness in anticipation of job interviews would increase post-intervention. These four factors make up the Assessment Measure, based on the 7- point Likert responses to four statements in the pre- and post-survey. There was a second prediction that there would be in increase in the quality of experimental subjects’ stories at post- intervention (using a 5-level rubric for rating), after having learned a best practice for answering job interview questions (i.e., the STAR formula). The findings supported the predicted increase in the students’ perceived measures of reflecting and identifying skills and of their confidence and preparedness in anticipation of interviewing for jobs upon graduating. Within groups, there was no change in the Control mean from PRE to POST while there was a significant increase for Experiment. Between these two groups, there were no differences observed pre-intervention (thus supporting the homogeneity of groups). Critically, the differences found post-intervention support the significant effect of intervention – with the experiment group’s POST score on the four dimensions of the Assessment Measure greater than the POST score of the control group. The findings supported the second hypothesis as well – that the experiment group would show an increase in the quality of their stories after the intervention compared to the control group (which showed a slight decrease in scores from pre- to post-survey) and resulted in a between-group comparison that was significant. This study provides support for the efforts of those in higher education who conduct programming such as the reflection session (intervention) in this research which prompts students to consider their skill development from studying or interning abroad and to learn to speak about it in ways that employers will value, especially in the interview process. This study also supports the contribution that international student mobility makes in increasing participants’ employability.