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This study examined how parental divorce during emerging adulthood gives meaning to emerging adults’ developmental stage and interpersonal relationships.

The participant sample consisted of 15 females from the Southeastern United States who were between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 21.5). Qualitative methods were utilized, with a transcendental phenomenological research methodology specifically applied. Interviews were conducted focusing on perceptions of the divorce experience in relation to important aspects of emerging adulthood, namely developmental experiences and interpersonal relationships, primarily intimate partner and dating experiences. NVivo was used to allow a “bottom-up” design, emergent design, and interpretive inquiry for data analysis.

Two major themes emerged from the data: (1) developmental stage facilitates insight into the divorce process and (2) parental divorce leads to contemplating and reconceptualizing perceptions of self and interpersonal relationships.

Results are relevant to researchers, parents, and practitioners as divorce is examined with a developmental lens. Findings suggest that the meaning and impact of parental divorce are distinct for emerging adult children, characterized by awareness and personal reflection. Implications for parenting and practice are provided.

Prior research identified conflicts in implementing performance measurement systems that include both financial and non-financial measures. Attempts to incorporate non-financial measures, for example, balanced scorecards (BSCs), have shown short-term success, only to be replaced with systems that rely on financial measures. We develop a theoretical model to explore evaluators’ choice and use of the most important performance measurement criterion among financial and non-financial measures.

Our model links participants’ prior evaluation experiences with their attitudes about relative accounting qualities and with their choice of the most important performance measure. This choice subsequently affects their evaluation judgments of managers who perform differentially on financial versus non-financial measures.

Experimental testing of our structural equation model indicates that it meets the accepted goodness of fit criteria. We conclude that experience has an influence on choice of performance measures and on decision heuristics in making such evaluations. We suggest that an “experience gap” must be considered when deciding which performance metrics to emphasize in scorecards or similar performance reports. We analyzed four accounting qualities, importance, relevance, reliability, and comparability and found that importance, relevance, and reliability have strong effects on how managers prioritize and use accounting measures.

We conducted our study in a controlled, experimental setting, including participants with diverse experiences. We provide direct evidence of participants’ experience and attitudes about the relative accounting qualities of financial and non-financial measures which we link to their choice of the most important performance measure. We link this choice to their performance evaluations.

In this chapter, we consider the impact of an international service-learning experience on six final year pre-service teachers’ preparedness to be inclusive teachers in terms of Kiely’s (2004) “transforming forms” (p. 9). These forms are “political,” “intellectual,” “moral,” “cultural,” “personal,” and “spiritual.” The analysis of the six participants’ reflection logs completed on return to university, and interviews undertaken 12 months after the experience, revealed four categories (personal growth, relationships with others, wider societal views, and impact on teaching) that encompass movement toward these transforming forms. We begin the chapter by considering service-learning frameworks and theories, drawing out our understanding of Kiely’s (2004) “transforming forms” (pp. 9–11). Following this discussion, we provide an overview of our program and the six participants. We then analyze the data from participants’ reflection logs and interviews. From our analysis, we suggest that all six participants showed some movement toward one or more of the “transforming forms.” Finally, we draw conclusions about the usefulness of Kiely’s framework for planning and reflecting on an international service-learning experience to prepare pre-service teachers to be inclusive teachers. We conclude that keeping in mind Kiely’s “transforming forms” when planning, reflecting on, and evaluating an international service-learning experience can better prepare students to be inclusive teachers.

A study of community college students enrolled in a for-credit study abroad program in Costa Rica sought to identify the experiences that influence intercultural competency growth during study abroad trips and to learn how the experiences influence the development of global leadership competencies. The results led to a modified global leadership development expertise model for understanding the process of global leadership development in student populations. The study revealed a key link between antecedent characteristics of participants and their transformational ability during the study. The study also revealed that there are types of transformational experiences that, when experienced sequentially, can maximize transformational potential and the development of intercultural competencies.

The main purpose of this paper is to test the effects of a classical intercultural simulation on participants' ability to modify their behavior in response to collectivistic and individualistic contexts. Moreover, the paper aims to examine moderating effects based on experiential learning and social identity theory.

The learning effects are evaluated through two separate quasi-experimental studies with 152 master students in business economics at a Danish university and 190 bachelor students in international business at a German university.

The analysis shows that intercultural simulations with artificial cultures significantly improve participants' ability to modify their behavior depending on cultural context. Participants who identify with an artificial culture that differs radically from their own take greater advantage of the simulation. The overall duration of international experience moderates participants' learning with a U-shaped effect. Culture-specific experience strengthens the positive effect of the simulation. The comparison of the two conducted studies indicates that previous cognitive teaching enhances learning.

The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of intercultural simulations that guide participants through all phases of the experiential learning cycle. Moreover, they underline the importance of assessing participants' cultural backgrounds before the assignment of training groups.

Prior research on intercultural simulations is often based on qualitative methods and mostly limited to affective outcomes, such as motivation and enjoyment of intercultural interactions. By contrast, this paper quantitatively tests to what extent intercultural simulations improve participants' ability to modify behavior depending on culture.

The Forward Motion Motivational Group (FMMG) is a psychological group intervention facilitated in the Mental Health Directorate of a high-secure Hospital. Research has highlighted a limited amount of service user involvement within secure settings. The aims of the study were to explore participant's experiences of FMMG, to establish whether these reflected the aims of the programme, to provide participants with the opportunity to recommend changes to the current service provision and to explore whether the programme supported engagement in further psychological interventions.

Ten programme completers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. The interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) alongside Beutow (2010) Saliency Analysis Guidelines.

Thematic analysis of the data resulted in five key themes: expectations, group experience, programme facilitators, learning and programme aims and programme development.

Qualitative measures provide an insight into whether participant's experiences reflect the programme aims which is a valuable indicator of treatment effectiveness. Participants advocated the value of completing an introductory group to broaden their insight into the structure and delivery of psychological group interventions.

Given the limited amount of research involving service users within secure settings, it is specifically the service user's experiences and suggestions for programme development that are considered within this paper. This highlights the value of service user involvement for those interested in conducting research within secure settings.

This qualitative study examined English for Professionals students' experience of the internship programme and their perceptions of the relevance of the internship programme to their current and future courses and to their future career choices.

This study employed a qualitative inquiry in which qualitative data were collected using journal writing. Using purposeful sampling, 40 English for Professionals students in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) were selected. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

This study revealed that the internship programme was beneficial to interns because it helped them to gain real-world experience and knowledge about the environment of real workplace. Interns' negative experience can affect their career selection. The majority of the participants revealed that the internship programme is relevant to most of their undergraduate courses. The participants revealed that the internship programme was effective as it helped them to explore their career choices and to select future courses that match their interests.

Taking into account students' negative experience and their perceptions of the relevance of internship to their courses and career choices, improvement of undergraduate programmes can be done. Unlike samples in previous studies, the sample in this study is English for Professionals students. The study provides significant findings which are related to interns' perceptions of the relevance of the internship programme to their career choices. Unlike all data collection methods used in previous studies, journal writing was used to collect qualitative data in this study.

The purpose of this article is to obtain an in-depth insight into the nature and impact of customers´ cocreation experiences in online communities and the effects of customer cocreation on innovation processes.

This study is focused on an online cocreation community created by a market research company on behalf of a company. By means of a case study approach and through in-depth interviews, the authors identify the actual customer experiences and measure (or assess) the degree of involvement of customer creativity and experience in new idea generation.

Cocreation experience can be enhanced through evoking pragmatic, sociability, usability and hedonic experiences and more positive experiences and therefore, outcomes of collaborative innovation in online communities can be achieved. Findings show a classification of each role the community moderator/community manager and peer online community members perform as antecedents of cocreation experience, highlight the value of group feeling/sense of community/sense of belonging and homophily/communality in achieving that, the nature of a supportive online platform and give an overview of positive and negative outcomes of cocreation experience.

This case study provides with valuable insights in the phenomenon of customer cocreation and how to enhance participation of community members in collaborative innovation in online communities through positive experience, which is important for businesses involved in innovation trajectories and product and service improvement efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative understanding of participants’ experiences in an exemplar large-scale organization development intervention (LODI). The purpose was to understand what contributes to the success of LODIs from participant experiences.

The research design was a qualitative study of one-on-one interview findings (n=23) from participants involved in LODIs that spanned over four years in a complex healthcare system. Participants involved in the process represented clinical, operational, and support service staff as well as all levels from frontline to senior leaders. The 23 participants consisted of 13 women and ten men.

The qualitative analysis showed that participants reported experiences of transformational change, where contextual conditions as well as personal and organizational transformation processes existed in the LODIs. Contextual conditions were shown to have a multiplier effect on the attainment of transformation in what was considered a successful large-scale change, where desired business outcomes were also achieved. Further, access to shared transformational experience is what created context for the sense of community, responsibility, and accountability that spurred change agents into action.

Prior theory and research shows that large-scale and similar organization development interventions result in transformational change, deepened relationships, and successful outcomes as a result of organizational change processes such as emergence and generativity. This study provides new insight into why LODIs work from participants’ perspectives. These findings may be used to design successful LODI processes and expands research to include and be informed by participants’ experiences, in a field predicated on stakeholder involvement to begin with.

This paper aims to focus on the long-term international experiences of a group of preservice English teachers who studied abroad as part of their training and recently returned home.

Employing an interpretivist case study, five preservice English teachers participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The participants were consulted to elicit feedback as the part of a member checking procedure.

This study revealed that the participants' views of their international experience were primarily shaped by two main themes: (1) postsojourn outcomes: intercultural learning, professional learning and personal growth and (2) “bumps” in the road: struggles in capitalizing the learning opportunities.

Recruiting students for extended study abroad programs alone without a concerted effort to address (inter)cultural learning and growth might not guarantee the quality and the outcomes of such programs. Based on the findings, the role of meaningful and intentional collaboration within the participant groups and between the partner institutions as well as critical reflection opportunities to assist prospective teachers through their growth in intercultural learning was discussed.