Buffering preconscious stressor appraisal: the protective role of self-efficacy

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Education and awarded by Brunel University.Many cognitive resources contribute towards the appraisal of stressors. Of these, self-efficacy (SE) is widely acknowledged to play a significant role in protecting adolescents from the effects of stress (Bandura, 1997). This study investigated that relationship through the use of a quasi-experimental methodology (Cook & Campbell, 1979) utilising an untreated Control group of 44 adolescent, female participants and an Experimental group of 70 additional participants, all of whom were volunteers drawn from the Sixth Form of a single participating school. The members of both participant groups took part in two rounds of testing, between which the members of the Experimental group were exposed to a significant academic stressor (one or more public A-level examinations). During both test phases, all participants completed the 10- item Perceived Stress Scale self-report (Cohen & Williamson, 1988), the Examination Self-Efficacy Scale instrument (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995) and a bespoke Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit stressor appraisal. Significant trends were identified by means of ANCOVA, correlation and regression analyses, and the resulting data were interpreted in terms of a dual process model of stress (Compas, 2004). Results not only concurred with those of previous studies (e.g. Betoret, 2006; Vaezi & Fallah, 2011) by demonstrating a strongly negative correlation between acute academic stress and academic SE, but provided new evidence to suggest that the ‘protective’ effect of SE occurs via a buffering mechanism at the level of preconscious stressor appraisals (Bargh, 1990), which limits the effect of acute stress exposure on preconscious stressor appraisals (e.g. Luecken & Appelhans, 2005)

Imaginative truth: biographical narratives inspired by the lives of six lone older women with critical commentary

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis comprises both creative and critical work. Imaginative Truth is a collection of biographical narratives in short story form inspired by the lives of six lone older women. Arranged chronologically per life depicted, every story and the accompanying transcript or manuscript excerpt offers a glimpse of a particular moment from each woman’s life, written in a manner necessary to and reflective of the life being illuminated. The critical commentary documents the need for effective literary representations of older people, the problem of representation especially of lone older women and the value of life story narratives. It covers ethical issues relating to the representation of real people in narrative form and locates examples of best practice from both life writing critics and practitioners. The commentary includes a discussion of the fact/fiction dichotomy in life writing, providing case studies of works that effectively negotiate such boundaries and positing historical fiction theory and accounts of praxis as useful resources for life writers working at the intersection of fiction and lived experience. This thesis aims to test and explore the notion of biographical truth and the boundary between fact and fiction

Poverty, savings banks and the development of self-help, c. 1775-1834

This thesis examines the development of self-help as an ideology and as an organisational principle for poor relief and how it came to dominate discussions over poverty and crucially inform the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The continuity of self-help with earlier discussions and reviews of the poor laws is explored and emphasised, as is the continuing moral core of poor relief despite historians’ frequent ascription of de-moralisation to the new political economy that came to heavily influence poor law discourse. The thesis analyses the evolution of the poor laws and of attitudes to poverty and begins with an examination of a divergence in the discourse relating to poverty between a more formal and centralised institutional approach and a more devolved, permissive institutional approach; the latter gained precedence due to its closer proximity to a dominant mode of thinking (as analysed by A. W. Coats) about the poor that held self-betterment as offering a solution to poverty most appropriate to the governance structures of the day. The greater role given to self-betterment and the natural affinity of more devolved schemes with a macroeconomic political economy framework pushed the evolution of poor law discourse along a route of emphasising individual probity and agency over the established model of community cohesion. Parallel to this divergence was the development of distinct intellectual traditions within poor law discourse between the older natural-law tradition of a natural right to subsistence and a new ideology of the natural law of markets and of competition for resources. By analysis of the thought of writers such as Thomas Robert Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, Patrick Colquhoun, David Davies, Frederick Morton Eden, Edmund Burke, etc., it is shown that this newer conception of natural law, encompassing a less interventionist and more macroeconomic approach (involving the deployment of statistics and abstraction, as explored by S. Sherman), proved more compatible with the devolved, more permissive institutional approach and so came to take precedence over that of the natural right to subsistence, which was associated more with traditional paternalism and community-level responses to scarcity and poverty. The natural law tradition spoke more to the abstract conceptions of poverty associated at this time with the greater deployment of statistics and tables in the analysis of social problems. It is demonstrated how writers of the period utilised utilitarian conceptions and nascent political economic arguments to portray the greater good of the country as a whole as possessed of greater moral and economic authority than more traditional ‘moral economy’ responses, and that vocabularies of virtue and duty were used to illustrate and justify such a shift. This set the scene for self-betterment as an economic strategy to evolve into an ideology of self-help which was developed as the panacea of poverty and the answer to the social dislocations caused by industrialisation. Self-help came to the fore as an approach that was more politically resonant in the era of revolutionary France and which enabled a more permissive institutional apparatus to be advanced. These institutions, such as allotments, savings banks and schools of industry, came to prominence in the period 1816-1820 and pertained more to macroeconomic understandings of poverty. They were expounded using a theme, that of ‘character’, that described poverty as the result of personal imprudence and hence as treatable, the most appropriate level for this treatment being that of the individual. The reforms of 1818-19 and the debates that informed them are given an extended analysis as they formed the crucial juncture in the cohering of self-help as an ideology and a paradigmatic shift in poor law policy towards greater discrimination underwritten by self-help. Finally, the 1834 Poor law Reform Act is explained in terms of the ideological development of arguments of self-help and character towards a more punitive and disciplinarian platform for enforcing self-help, with the cost-efficient and systematic institutional approach of Bentham adapted to the purpose

Asiakaslähtöinen markkinointi toimialan murroksessa - tapaus Suomen tekstiili- ja muotiala

Elämme jatkuvan disruption keskellä. Makroympäristössä tapahtuvat muutokset vaikuttavat vääjäämättä yritystoimintaan ja siten myös markkinointiin. Tässä tutkimuksessa haetaan vastausta kysymykseen, miten kuluttaja näkyy yritysten markkinoinnissa murroksen keskellä? Tähän kysymykseen lähdettiin vastaamaan tutkimalla, miten yritykset johtavat markkinointia tekstiili- ja muotialalla. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli laajentaa olemassa olevaa teoriaa markkinoinnista toimialamurroksessa, sillä tieteellinen kirjallisuus aiheesta on rajoittunutta. Teoreettisen viitekehyksen teoreettisena pohjana toimi asiakaskeskeinen logiikka, customer-dominant- logic, jonka yhteys murrokseen perusteltiin perinteisten murrosteorioiden ja markkinoinnin roolin muuttumisen avulla. Tutkimus on monitapaustutkimus ja aineisto kerättiin teemahaastattelujen avulla. Tutkimuksen keskeisimmät löydökset voidaan kiteyttää kolmeen kohtaan. Ensinnä, globalisaation myötä makroympäristön vaikutus liiketoimintaan on korostunut. Esimerkiksi, poliittista päätäntää ja trendejä ymmärtämällä yritys voi saavuttaa kilpailuetua. Toiseksi, markkinoinnin rooli yrityksen toiminnassa on merkittävä kilpailutekijä. Jos markkinointi nähdään erillisenä tukitoimintona – ja tämän myötä pääasiassa kuluna – korostuu asiakkaan ostopäätöksessä hinta. Jos taas markkinointi nähdään kokonaisvaltaisena liiketoiminnan perustana ohjaavat arvot enemmän kuluttajan ostopäätöstä, koska mm. tarjooman käsite on laajempi. Kolmantena, läsnäolon syvyys korreloi sen kanssa millainen rooli markkinoinnilla on yrityksessä. Jos markkinointi nähdään pelkkänä kuluna ja muiden toimintojen tukitoimena, on todennäköistä, että markkinoinnin toimet suunnataan niin, että ne tuottavat taloudellista hyötyä mahdollisimman nopealla aikajänteellä. Tällöin mm. pitkäjänteinen yhteiskunnallinen vaikuttaminen voidaan nähdä turhana. Huomioitava kuitenkin on se, että myös yrityksen koko vaikuttaa läsnäolon syvyyteen.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Obstructive sleep apnoea and daytime driver sleepiness

Driver sleepiness is known to be a major contributor to road traffic incidents (RTIs). An initial literature review identified many studies reporting untreated obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) sufferers as having impaired driving performance and increased RTI risk. It is consistently reported that treatment with continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) improves driving performance and decreases RTI risk, although most of these studies are conducted less than one year after starting treatment. UK law allows treated OSA patients to continue driving if their doctor states that treatment has been successful. Despite the wealth of publications surrounding OSA and driving, 6 key areas were identified from the literature review as not fully investigated, the: (i) prevalence of undiagnosed OSA in heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers in the UK; (ii) impact of sleep restriction on long term CPAP treated OSA compared with healthy controls; (iii) ability of treated OSA participants to identify sleepiness when driving; (iv) impact of one night CPAP withdrawal on driving performance; (v) individual difference in driving performance of long term CPAP treated OSA participants; (vi) choice of countermeasures to driver sleepiness by two groups susceptible to driver sleepiness, OSA and HGV drivers. Key areas (i) and (vi) were assessed using questionnaires. 148 HGV drivers were surveyed to assess OSA symptoms and preference of countermeasures to driver sleepiness. All participants completing the driving simulator study were also surveyed. 9.5% of HGV drivers were found to have symptoms of suspected undiagnosed OSA. Additionally the OSA risk factors were more prevalent for HGV drivers than reported in national statistics reports for the general population. The most effective countermeasures to driver sleepiness (caffeine and a nap) were not the most popular. Being part of a susceptible group (OSA or HGV driver) and prior experience of driver sleepiness did not promote effective choice of countermeasure. Key areas (ii) to (v) were assessed using a driving simulator. Driving simulators present a safe environment to test participants in a scenario where they may experience sleepiness without endangering other road users.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo