The overall aim of the present thesis was to explore and describe the health experiences of men and women with musculoskeletal problems. The specific aims of the four papers were: (I) to explore the experience of illness and wellness among ambulance personnel with musculoskeletal symptoms; (II) to explore the experience of illness and wellness among female health care personnel with musculoskeletal symptoms; (III) to explore the experience of bodily illness among people with musculoskeletal problems in the neck-shoulder region, and; (IV) to investigate the symptoms described by people with non-specific neck-shoulder problems, to investigate the method of development of neck-shoulder questionnaires that assesses pain and other symptoms, to analyse the content and items of these questionnaires, and to compare the findings. The overall findings show that the occupationally active men and women with MSDs were “striving for balance” (I-II), that the disease course of chronic neck-shoulder disorders was characterised by “uncontrollable fluctuations” (III), and that most neck-shoulder questionnaires had a low correspondence to the variety of symptoms experienced during this course (IV). In the process of striving for balance (I-II), the informants’ health experiences were not a state of either wellness or illness, but of both, in varying degrees at different times. The balancing started when illness became too intrusive, and was a process of minimising the impact of illness by accepting and handling it, while attaining and maintaining wellness to feel well enough. When striving for balance, the interviewees kept on working to continue being nurtured at the same time as they made different efforts directed at minimising the impact of their illness. For both men and women, illness was characterised by disembodiment, vulnerability, and exhaustion. The illness experiences were counterbalanced by wellness, where some differences could be recognised between the men and the women. Study III further explored the experiences of bodily illness, focusing on people with chronic musculoskeletal disorders in the neck-shoulder region. The course of the disorder was described as characterised by uncontrollable fluctuations, and it usually developed from insidious symptoms to a state of constant discomfort. The participants experienced calmer periods during the course, but intermittent events of increasing illness were always lying in wait, with periodic moments of consuming intensity. In the interviews included in study IV a variety of symptoms were expressed, which indicated a bodily, mental, and emotional engagement, which included more general and more severe symptoms than are usually related to neck-shoulder disorders. Few of the questionnaires were developed using the experiences of the affected. Taken as a whole, did the questionnaires cover many of the symptoms of the interviewees, but each individual questionnaire only included a few. The fluctuations and nuances of symptoms were rarely considered. The correspondence between individual questionnaires and the experiences of those affected was most often low. This thesis reveals other aspects of health than just bodily experiences as important among occupationally active people with MSDs. It also provides a description of the disease course, and an indication of possibilities for improvement of neck-shoulder questionnaires.

Aim: The overall aim of this thesis is, from the point of view of parents of a child with asthma, to describe meanings of being a parent, parents’ quality of life, and to describe how family relations are influenced by their child’s disease. The aim is also to increase the understanding of what strategies professional caregivers use in their work with teenagers suffering from asthma. Methods: Informants in the three qualitative studies were 29 parents (17 mothers and 12 fathers) of children with asthma and 7 professional caregivers. Informants in a quantitative quality of life study were 371 parents. The data collections were undertaken by means of interviews, observations and a questionnaire. The data was analysed by means of a phenomenological-hermeneutic method, grounded theory and statistics. Results: A meaning of being a parent of a child with asthma is to live a strenuous life and to fear that the child might die during a severe asthma attack. The parents’ actions involve both protecting and liberating and their feelings involve sadness as well as acceptance. Mostly the mothers act in a protecting manner and express feelings of sadness. The fathers mostly act in a liberating manner and express feelings of acceptance. The core concern in families of a child with asthma was found to be disease-engendered uncertainty. The mothers describe that feelings of uncertainty always are present owing to the unpredictability of the disease. These feelings make the mothers more or less available for family members. For the child with asthma the mothers’ experience that they are always available. Thus, control and tight bonds characterize the mother-child relationships. The mothers’ constant availability for the child with asthma is experienced to lead to a decreased availability for other family members and theses relationships are characterised by feelings of forsakenness and lack of understanding. However, when parents of children with asthma estimate their quality of life by a questionnaire, they estimate it as comparatively high. In the same family the parents scoring of separate items was to a large extent similar. The result also shows that professional caregivers’ central concern is to assist teenagers with asthma to conquer life. This gives rise to five strategies: showing respect, being at hand, promoting personal sense of responsibility, promoting exceeding boundaries, and promoting reflections. In professional caregivers’ attempt to assist teenagers to conquer life some differences are seen in the way they support boys and girls. Conclusion: One conclusion drawn from this thesis is that being a parent of a child with asthma involves feelings of uncertainty. In meeting the parents in question, caregivers should reflect upon these feelings and consider how the parents could be assisted. As mothers and fathers describe different attitudes in relation to the care of the child, it is also important to reflect upon how professional caregivers can assist the balance between the mothers’ protecting and the fathers’ liberating attitudes. It is also important for professional caregivers to reflect upon how they meet teenage girls and boys with asthma respectively, and to take their needs and understanding of the situation into consideration.

Aim: The overall aim of this thesis is to illuminate meanings of being a child with asthma, to describe what strategies they use to manage their daily life, and how they estimate their quality of life. The aim is also to describe how family relations might be influenced by the child’s asthma disease. Methods: Informants in three qualitative studies were 37 children with asthma and 17 mothers of children with asthma. Informants in a quantitative quality of life study were 226 children with asthma. The data collections were undertaken by means of interviews, observations, and a questionnaire (PAQLQ). The data was analysed by means of phenomenological-hermeneutic method, grounded theory, and statistics. Results: A meaning of being a child with asthma is to strive to live a normal life, which means to be able to participate in the same activities as healthy friends. According to the children, participation is facilitated by confidence in one’s own knowledge, by other people’s wish to help, and by confidence in medicines. On occasions when the disease becomes an obstacle to participation, the children feel like outsiders, and talk about feelings of deprivation, guilt, loneliness, anxiety, and fear. When observing and interviewing teenagers with asthma they showed and expressed that their core concern was not letting the disease get the upper hand over life. To manage this core concern they used three strategies: keeping a distance to the disease, challenging the disease, and taking the disease into consideration. Boys mainly keep a distance to the disease while girls mainly take the disease into consideration. Challenging the disease seems to be a strategy used by both girls and boys. Differences between girls and boys were also seen when children with asthma estimated their quality of life, even though they both estimate their quality of life as comparatively high. A significant association was found between a higher quality of life and being a boy, compared to being a girl. The core concern in families of a child with asthma was found to be disease-engendered uncertainty. The mothers experience themselves as always being available for the child with asthma, owing to the unpredictability of the disease. Control and tight bonds therefore characterize the relation between the mother and the sick child. Being constantly available for the child with asthma, decreases the mothers’ availability for other family members and these relations are described as being characterised by feelings of being forsaken and lack of understanding. Conclusion: One conclusion drawn from this thesis is that life with asthma includes moments of wellbeing for both children with asthma and their mothers, but also moments when they experience that the disease gets the upper hand over life. In assisting them it is of great value to create a milieu where the individuals dare to talk about their experiences and to be aware of possible differences between boys and girls. It is also important never to judge, but to customize care, based on the needs of each individual.

La tesi presenta una ricerca sull'interazione psicosociale in realtà virtuale. Il primo studio esplora l'impatto di una metodologia di produzione dei dati qualitativa sull'esperienza in RV; il secondo studio esplora, con un approccio grounded theory, le modalità di costruzione della presenza; il terzo studio esplorare l'interazione in rv durante delle sessioni di terapia; il quarto studio, tramite il ricorso all'analisi delle conversazioni, esplora le modalità di co-definizione dei significati in rv. / This research concerns psycho-social interactions in Virtual Reality. In order to investigate subjective experience by a qualitative approach, in the first experiment the feasibility of the thinking aloud data production technique has been verified. The second study investigated the process of presence, by analyzing data produced in the first study, within a grounded theory approach. The use of Virtual Reality in mental health, and particularly for psychotherapy, introduces a radical modification in the therapeutic setting: the typical configuration requires the patient to be immersed in the VE, while the therapist observes and controls the interaction by “outside” the environment. This unique ecosystem requires a qualitative approach to investigate it. In the third study, a qualitative content approach has been used, in order to describe the interactional processes and the co-construction of the sense of presence. In the fourth study, conversational processes in a shared VE have been investigated by creating a shared task in VR and in vivo. Results from this research program suggest the interactional nature of the sense of presence.

Retaining IT employees help them finding a path to entrepreneurship or even investing in spin-offs created by their employees (i.e. future entrepreneurs) is essential for the vitality of the economy. The objective of this thesis is to answer the following research question: “why and how do IT professionals3 decide to quit their salaried employment to start a business?” We do so by proposing a theory related to the under researched area of IT entrepreneurial turnover. The first chapter clarifies the unfolding model (Lee et al., 1999), so that it could be used with confidence (e.g. shock and image violation). The second chapter proposes one new core category, i.e. the Readiness to Quit (RTQ) which is divided into two types, the current RTQ and the Necessary Configuration to Quit (NCQ). We integrate them in a conceptual framework including the context, a chronology and the compatibility test between the current RTQ and the NCQs indicating that the IT professional is ready to quit. The last chapter proposes a second core category, IT Entrepreneurial Epiphany, which connect the shock and the image violations with the current RTQ. The IT Entrepreneurial Epiphany is composed of five lower-level concepts: Business, playing the game; Risk reduction; Timing; Context and opportunity; and finally long-term reason for becoming an entrepreneur. Finally, we discuss the enrichment of the conceptual framework resulting from these new core categories. In sum, we contribute to the research by proposing two core categories embedded in a rich conceptual framework.

This paper exposes the problems and challenges organizations face when integrating aged systems, web based systems and web services. The paper focuses on how people with different titles in an organization experience systems integration and the factors that contribute to project failure or success. The research methodology used in this is Grounded Theory and the resulting theory of this paper has taken form through the coding of transcribed interviews, which have gone through a constant comparing to other theories in the area of interest, mostly articles about success factors in system integration. The resulting outcome is a success model aimed to describe the underlying indicators to achieve project success. The success model consists of three factors that contribute to success in integration projects. The factors are: globalization, governance and balance. Integration projects are very complex in nature, more so than normal projects as there are more stakeholders involved and more interests to take into consideration. Due to the complex nature of integration projects, the need for a holistic view arises. It's crucial for an integration project that stakeholders take the interests and needs of other projects taking place simultaneously into consideration. The governance aspect of systems integration deals with the planning of strategies, communication and cooperation with other stakeholders involved within the integration project. It's crucial for integration projects to shift focus from individual goals and individual interest to mutual goals and interests. The third and final factor contributing to success in integration projects is balance. The balance between technical issues and organizational issues is crucial for the success of projects. It's very common that organizations focus on technical issues and neglect the organizational issues.

This study applies qualitative methodology to the study of sociopolitical development (SPD) among community and labor organizers of color. Participant data (open-ended applications) were obtained from a long-standing training institution, span 18 years (n=200), and equally represent Black, Latino/a, and Asian individuals. This study sought to reveal important dimensions of SPD and to identify contributing life experiences. Three SPD themes emerged: (1) social analysis, (2) commitment, and (3) empowerment. An organizer thus exhibits multidimensional insight into social injustice, commitment to taking action, and genuine belief in his/her individual and collective abilities. Four experiential domains contributed to participants’ SPD: (a) family, (b) social identity, (c) social injustice and (d) sociopolitical work. Each theme and domain is described in a multidimensional way. The relationships between life experiences and SPD themes are furthermore examined, and located within existing psychological research. Finally, implications of these findings for practitioners are discussed.

Older people should have a life with a sense of value and should feel confident. These ethical values, which are expressed in normative ethics, are expected to prevail in empirical ethics. Central components of nursing are the ethical issues of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and the principles of justice. The general aim of this thesis is to identify and describe the ethical values that are apparent in the caring encounter and their influence on the people involved. This is done from the perspective of the older person in study (I), next of kin in study (II) and nurses in study (III). In study (IV) the aim was to synthesize the concepts from empirical studies (I- III) and analyze, compare and interrelate them with normative ethics. Studies (I, III) were empirical observational studies including follow-up interviews. Twenty-two older people participated voluntarily in study (I), and in study (III) 20 nurses participated voluntarily. In study (II) fourteen next of kin were interviewed. In studies (I- III) constant comparative analysis, the core foundation of grounded theory, was used. Five concepts were used in the analysis in study (IV); three from the grounded theory studies (I- III) and two from the theoretical framework on normative ethics i.e. the ICN code and SFS law. Five categories; being addressed, receiving respect, desiring to participate, increasing self-determination and gaining self-confidence formed the basis for the core category ‚Approaching‛ in study (I). ‘Approaching’ indicates the ethical values that guide nurses in their caring encounters with older people. These ethical values are noted by the older people and are greatly appreciated by them, and also lead to improved quality of care. Four categories were identified in study (II): Receiving, showing respect, facilitating participation and showing professionalism. These categories formed the basis of the core category ‚Being amenable‛, a concept identified in the next of kin’s description of the ethical values that they and the older patients perceive in the caring encounter. In study (III), three categories were identified: showing consideration, connecting, and caring for. These categories formed the basis of the core category ‚Corroborating‛. Corroborating deals with support and interaction. Empirical ethics and normative ethics are intertwined, according to the findings of this study (IV). Normative ethics influence the nurse’s practical performance and could have a greater influence in supporting nurses as professionals. Criteria of good ethical care according to this thesis are: showing respect, invitation to participation, allowing self-determination, and providing safe and secure care. These criteria are elements of the concept of being professional. Professionalism of nurses is shown by: the approach nurses adapt to the performance of their duties, and their competence and knowledge, but also how they apply laws and professional codes

The welfare of the elderly population is one of the most important goals of the public health services. At macro level the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare state that the premier goal is for elderly people to have dignified and comfortable lives. They should have a life with a sense of value and feel confident. These ethical values which are expressed on macro level or as normative ethics are expected to prevail at micro level. In our study the micro level is the caring encounter between the elderly patient, next of kin and nurses. Ethical values and morals are important aspects that influence the quality of care, videlicet in empiric ethics. The aim of study (I) was to identify and describe the ethical values experienced by the older person in the daily interaction with nurses in a ward for older people during caring encounters. In study (II) the aim was to identify and describe the governing ethical values that next of kin experience in interaction with nurses who care for elderly patients at a geriatric clinic. Study (I) which was an empirical observational study included follow-up interviews. Twenty-two older people participated voluntarily. In study (II) interviews with fourteen next of kin were conducted. In both studies Constant comparative analysis, the core foundation of grounded theory was used. Five categories; Being addressed, receiving respect, desiring to participate, increasing self-determination and gaining self-confidence formed the basis for the core category in study (I): Approaching. Approaching concerns the way people become closer to each other in a physical space .It also includes how people become closer to each other in a dialogue, which involves verbal or bodily communication. Approaching indicates the ethical values that guide nurses in their caring encounters with older people. This ethical value is noted by the older person and has an individual value, as well as leading to improved quality of their care. The older person will be confident and satisfied with the caring encounter if the desired components in the nurse’s approaching are exhibited. Four categories were identified in study (II): Receiving, showing respect, facilitating participation and showing professionalism. These categories formed the basis of the core category: “Being amenable”, a concept identified in the next of kin’s description of the ethical values that they and the elderly patients perceive in the caring encounter. Being amenable means that the nurses are guided by ethical values; taking into account the elderly patient and next of kin. Nurses who focus on elderly patients’ well-being as a final principle will affect next of kin and their experience of this fundamental situation.

Syftet med studien är att öka kunskapen om elevers förståelse av sina skriftliga omdömen och om vilka faktorer som påverkar förståelsen av dokumenten. Forskningsansatsen är starkt inspirerad av grundad teori. Studiens resultat utgår dels från analys av intervjuer av elever i år två och dels från dokumentanalys av elevernas skriftliga omdömen. Dessa båda har i den avslutande analysen relaterats till varandra, vilket har resulterat i en teoretisk modell, EFO-modellen som står för Elevers Förståelse av sina Skriftliga omdömen.   Vid intervjuerna framkom att eleverna förstår omdömena på olika sätt och i olika utsträckning. Förståelsen påverkas av elevens motivation och koncentration, deras behov av bekräftelse samt deras språkliga förmåga. Förståelsen påverkas också av hur avancerat språk omdömet är skrivet på. Det språk omdömet är skrivet på relaterar även till omdömets innehåll.   Avslutningsvis diskuteras svårigheten med att skriva omdömen som kan förstås av eleverna samtidigt som de beskriver de kunskapskvalitéer som lyfts fram i läroplanen.