Library: Fielding Graduate University (Santa Barbara, CA, USA)

This research explored how identity transitions are accomplished when individuals experience distress in relationship to the social systems in which they are embedded. Study participants grew up in cultic groups, where they were parented by committed members. Twenty-two people who chose to leave or were ejected from 12 cultic groups provided low point, high point, and turning point stories for an exploratory narrative analysis. Life story narratives revealed a jarring disconnect between what participants were expected to believe and become and how they experienced themselves. The research i...

This qualitative study explores how middle managers who thrived during Hurricane Katrina used their workplace social support systems. An emphasis was placed on identifying the sources and types of support received before, during, and after the Katrina crisis. Significant challenges exist today for organizations on the basis of societal, political, environmental, and technological trends. Among those trends are predictions of greater numbers and intensities of weather-related crises triggered in part by global weather pattern shifts and global warming. These challenges create a compelling ne...

Internationally adopted persons confront multiple challenges in constructing their identities. This study of the narrative burden of self looks at and interprets the dynamic process in which internationally adopted people develop, coordinate and manage their sense of self, identity and cultural/racial personhood. Drawing on the theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), the study focuses on their use of orphaning and adoption stories to most skillfully position and tell one's origin story in concert with one's internal sense of self, and the pressures and forces found in interpers...

The first generation of children growing up in the 1980s and 1990s with the official diagnosis of ADHD is now completing college and entering the workforce, yet few qualitative research studies examine the experiences of these young adults as they leave the safety of family homes or educational institutions. This study addresses the research question: What are some of the challenging work experiences as described by young adults with ADHD in a structured work environment? Young adults, ages 22- to 28-years-old, from across the USA were interviewed to examine, qualitatively, the types of challe...