Department of behavioural science and social work

Barns lek: Könsskillnader syns tidigt.                                                   
Children's Play: Gender Differences Are Visible Early
Dagisbarn som leker tillsammans utvecklar tidigt typiska könsrollsmönster. Pojkarna ger order och talar om sin egen aktivitet, medan flickorna genom samförstånd förhandlar om hur leken ska fortsätta. Det visar en samtalsanalys på daghem gjord med hjälp av videokamera. Datainsamlingen gjordes under 1992-1993 och 1995. Hedman följde då 56 barn 3-6 år på tre kommunala daghem i Lund. Av dessa var 24 flickor och 32 pojkar.

Rationale: Atrial fibrillation (AF) increases the risk of stroke and it can be reduced by treatment with warfarin. Some patients consider that warfarin is a stressful treatment with undesired effects and the perceived barriers include unwillingness to take it. Knowledge of patients resisting warfarin treatment may be useful for the potential threat to maintaining shared decision-making in the consultation as a central tenet of person-centered medicine. Aims and objectives: To identify how patients resist treatment with warfarin and how cardiologists respond to patients' resistance. The co-constructive perspective of this work analyses the consultations by emphasizing the clinical communication strategies of both patients and cardiologists. Method: Eleven videotaped consultations, in 4 different hospitals, were selected for analysis. Treatment interactions regarding warfarin between patients with AF and cardiologists were analysed, according to the methodology of conversation analysis. Results: There were 4 types of resistance from patients for accepting treatment with warfarin. These included "Giving reasons for their resistance", "Suggestion of another treatment option by the patient", "Stating a treatment preference" and "Questioning or challenging the cardiologist's treatment recommendation". The cardiologists' responses to the patients' resistance included "Repeating the treatment recommendation", "Negotiation with the patient", "Providing additional information on the recommended treatment" and "Extending the explanation for the purpose of taking the treatment". Conclusions: By showing resistance, patients are thought to want to participate in their treatment decisions and an awareness of patients' resistance to treatment enables cardiologists to address the patients' experience-based views on their treatment and individual concerns as part of clinical strategies to increase the person-centeredness of medical intervention.

IAGG 2017 World Congress stress appraisal and coping, ecological system and human development, this study developed and tested an integrative model to precisely explain the caregivers' health in the context of dementia. A total of 400 family caregivers of PWD (mean age =58.2 ± 12.9) were interviewed with validated questionnaires. Path analysis indicated that the effects of caregiving stressor, contextual (familism, social support) interpersonal (dyadic relationship) and intrapsychic factors (sense of coherence, neuroticism) on caregivers' health were mediated by stress appraisal and coping process. Caregivers who handled more dementia symptoms (β=0.195, p<0.001), with poorer dyadic (β=0.326, p<0.001) and social support (β=-0.180, p<0.001), and be more neurotic (β=0.205, p<0.001) perceived the caregiving situation as more burdensome, whereas those with better dyadic relationship (β=-0.304, p<0.001) perceived more caregiving gain. Caregivers with a stronger sense of coherence (β=0.154, p<0.01), and less stong belief on familism (β=-0.171, p<0.001) were more likely to use active coping. Active coping also mediated the effects of caregiving gain and burden, and had significantly positive direct effects on both physical (β=0.285, p<0.001) and mental health (β=0.542, p<0.001). based on the findings, various recommendations on service and theory development in the context of dementia caregiving were proposed.

Healthcare outcome is to achieve optimal health for each patient. It is a well-known phenomenon that patients suffer from care injuries. Operations managers have difficulties in seeing that the relationship between safety culture, values and attitudes affects the medical care to the detriment of the patient. The aim was to describe the views on patient safety by operations managers and the establishment of patient safety and safety culture in somatic hospital care. Four open questions were answered by 29 operations managers in somatic hospital care. Data analysis was carried out by deductive qualitative content analysis. Operations managers found production to be the most important goal, and patient safety was linked to this basic mission. Safety work meant to achieve optimal health outcomes for each patient in a continuous development of operations. This was accomplished by pursuing a high level of competence among employees, having a functioning report system and preventing medical errors. Safety culture was mentioned to a smaller extent. The primary target of patient safety work by the operations managers was improving care quality which resulted in fewer complications and shorter care time. A change in emphasis to primary safety work is necessary. To accomplish this increased knowledge of communication, teamwork and clinical decision making are required.

This dissertation is a conversation analytic examination of recurrent practices of interaction in medical emergency calls. The study expands the analytical focus in past research on emergency calls between emergency call operators and callers to pre-hospital emergency care interaction on the phone between nurses, physicians and callers. The investigation is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Swedish emergency control centre. The data used for the study consists primarily of audio recordings of medical emergency calls.Fundamental procedures in medical emergency calls examined in the dissertation are: (1) questioning; (2) emotion management; (3) risk management and (4) instruction giving. Emergency call-takers ask questions to elicit descriptions by callers of what is happening and to manage symptoms of patients to help keep them safe until ambulance crews arrive. In the questioning practice about acutely ill or injured patients call-takers use mainly yes-no questions and clarify pr...

LAT-relationships (from Living Apart Together), in which partners retain their own homes although they have a long-term intimate relationship, represent an increasingly acceptable choice among elderly in Sweden. LAT-relationships, unlike marriage or cohabitation, create special conditions that enable an intimate relationship to be combined with autonomy. However, this does not mean that the way in which the balance between autonomy and intimacy is achieved is given. This study examines the home as a resource for women's boundary making, i.e. the process in which boundaries are established around their homes in order to influence their interaction with partners, friends and kin. The study is based on questionnaires to elderly Swedish men and women Living Apart Together (n=116) and on qualitative interviews. There is a broad variety of ways of establishing boundaries in time and space, ranging from having direct control over who has access to one's home to more subtle time-zoning strategies, but all the women studied seem to prioritize the possibility of keeping their various social relations separate from one another.

In the Scandinavian welfare context, the emphasis on cooperation between public authorities and the nonprofit sector continues to be a central institutional characteristic. But to what extent have the new Muslim congregations adapted to the Scandinavian tradition of organizational cooperation, and what circumstances—internal or external to these organizations—promote or disrupt the development of such cooperation? This study is based on a nationwide survey of local Muslim congregations in Sweden (n = 105). No support was found for the widespread notion that European Muslim congregations tend to exist as separate enclaves. The powerful discursive emphasis on organizational cooperation in Scandinavia creates vital opportunity structures, but local variations in demographic and socioeconomic conditions also seem to have an impact. Among internal factors that influence willingness to cooperate is not least the degree of ethnic heterogeneity; openness to different Muslim traditions—a precondition for a multiethnic congregation—is seen to correspond to a greater openness to the wider society.

Although the psychological stress created by terror has been extensively researched, little has been written about the subjective experience of living with terror. How do people perceive risk and how do they adjust their daily lives?
The Lebanese capital Beirut suffered from a wave of bomb attacks following the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. In order to examine people’s reactions and ways of coping with these events, 14 focus group interviews (n = 77) were conducted in targeted areas. The findings suggest that Beirutis could no longer rely on the taken-for-granted routines of daily life. By changing their routes to school or work and avoiding public places, they restricted their daily activities. However, the data also suggest that targeted people attempted to normalize their everyday lives. Two strategies were employed. The first can be described as bracketing in time and space, which means that people tried to benefit from periods they perceived as moments of reprieve, and that they defined business and private space as safe havens. Bracketing can also be described as re-normalization, i.e. as an attempt to return to the previous state of ‘normality’. The other strategy can be described as crisis normalization and means that the new evaluations of the risks and new patterns of action adopted, which originally deviated from people’s established routines, themselves became routinized.

Social scientists have long been interested in the significance of unexpected, dramatic events for social change. However, when it comes to research on prejudice and hate crimes, the impact of sudden, dramatic events has been little considered. The purpose of this research review is to survey European data to elucidate the temporal links between unexpected events, Islamophobia, and Islamophobic hate crimes, and also to pinpoint some of the methodological problems faced by scholars studying the impact of unanticipated dramatic events on Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crimes; the significance of unexpected events often leaves researchers without access to relevant baseline data. The studies of Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crimes considered in the present article privilege a dynamic view of time: terrorist attacks instill a sense of uncertainty and risk and Islamophobia and hate crimes are to a large extent event-driven and reactive, and tend to flare up on the heels of dramatic events. The recent attention paid to the role of unexpected, dramatic events represents a new and very promising approach to the study of prejudice and hate crimes; with the earlier, essentially spatial research focus now complemented by a temporal focus, the chances increase of charting the underlying dynamics and causes of prejudice and hate crimes.

This study is based on a nationwide survey of local Muslim congregations (n = 105) and focuses on the patterns and function of voluntary social work carried out by the congregations. Muslim congregations in Sweden are not only religious meeting places, but also social meeting places and centres for the organisation of a broad range of social welfare services: outreach activities, support to newly arrived immigrants and activities for children and young people. The work is carried out on a voluntary basis at the intersection between the congregation and the community. Muslim voluntary social work appears to be most intensive in smaller municipalities with a large amount of unemployment. The dominant discourse on Islam in Europe has claimed that Muslim social work is part of an attempt to create self-sufficient enclaves that impede the integration of Muslim immigrants into the wider society. Claims of this type seem, however, to be largely unfounded. The Swedish Muslim congregations that carry out the most voluntary social work are those most interested in co-operation with other organisations and with authorities of different types and those that have the most positive experiences of the wider society.

This article provides a brief introduction to the Repertory Grid Technique and aims to demonstrate the use of the technique in different social work contexts. The Repertory Grid Technique draws from an open interview procedure that requires respondents to classify and evaluate elements within the environment on a numerical scale according to their own personal constructs. The result of this interview is a cognitive matrix of elements and constructs that can be explored in both a qualitative and a quantitative manner. Several applications for the practice, education and research of social work are suggested, with the overall purpose to heighten the perception of individuals' mental construction of their social life.