This thesis will explore the causality and link between Child Crisis Arizona (or “CCA'') and the applicability of the life-course framework. Child Crisis Arizona operates an emergency children’s shelter in Maricopa County, AZ, under the broader Arizona Department of Child Safety (or “DCS”) mission of providing safe and effective interventions for children at risk of being displaced from their homes. Utilizing a framework initially designed under a sociologist’s purview, the life-course perspective has evolved into a multidisciplinary approach to illuminate the complex nature of criminal behaviors, especially early in life in childhood. As such, the first section will detail the current issues regarding Arizona’s child safety system, the background of CCA, and the fundamental principles of the life-course framework to address how CCA provides beneficial results to a child’s life-course. The thesis will then discuss the policy measures provided by CCA that positively intervene in a child’s educational, medical, and other holistic developments. This is followed by examining the applications of CCA and course while incorporating various scholarly literature to link the two. The thesis will conclude with a brief discussion of this paper’s research limitations, future implications, and concluding remarks. Ultimately, this thesis highlights how children who go into Child Crisis Arizona’s emergency children’s shelter present significant potential of utilizing the event as a turning point to lead conventional lives through an early positive life experience.

When consumers find that something critically out of the ordinary has occurred, they direct attention to evaluate such a critical incident more closely. The results of this evaluation may put consumers on a switching path or it might lead them to engage in unfavorable behaviors from the perspective of the organization, such as engaging in negative word-or-mouth online. The negative consequences of some product (goods or services) failures go beyond simple product attribute defects, leading customers to terminate the relationship with the organization. This dissertation, which is composed of three essays, investigates how consumers engage in negative word-of-mouth on social media channels in response to their various product failures and explores an important relationship event of betrayal, which can be triggered by certain product failures. It investigates how betrayal is perceived by customers and influences a range of their behaviors across business-to-consumer and business-to-business contexts.

This qualitative study examines the major changes in relationship closeness of married couples when one spouse acquires a vision disability. Turning Points analysis and Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT) were utilized which required participants to plot their relational journey on a graph after the onset of the disability. A sample of 32 participants generating 100 unique turning points and 32 RIT graphs lent in-depth insight into the less explored area of the impact of a visual disability on marital relationships. A constant comparison method employed for the analysis of these turning points revealed six major categories, which include Change in Relational Dynamics, Realization of the Disability, Regaining Normality in Life, Resilience, Reactions to Assistance, and Dealing with the Disability. These turning points differ in terms of their positive or negative impact on the relational closeness between partners. In addition, the 32 individual RIT graphs were also analyzed and were grouped into four categories based on visual similarity, which include Erratic Relational Restoration, Erratic Relational Increase, Consistent Closeness and Gradual Relational Increase. Results provide theoretical contributions to disability and marriage literature. Implications for the application of turning points to the study of post-disability marital relationships are also discussed, and research directions identified.