Yes / People living with dementia vary in awareness of their abilities. We explored awareness of the condition and diagnosis in people with mild-to-moderate dementia, and how this relates to quality of life, well-being, life satisfaction, and caregiver stress. This study was a cross-sectional exploratory analysis of data from the IDEAL cohort, which recruited people with dementia living at home and available caregivers from 29 research sites in Great Britain. Our study included 917 people with mild-to-moderate dementia and 755 carers. Low and high awareness groups were derived from self-reported responses to a dementia representation measure. Logistic regression was used to explore predictors of awareness of condition and diagnosis using demographic, cognitive, functional and psychological measures, and the relationship with quality of life, well-being and life satisfaction (‘living well’), and caregiver stress. There were 83 people with low awareness of their condition. The remaining 834 people showed some awareness and 103 of these had high awareness of their condition and diagnosis. Psychosocial factors were stronger predictors of awareness than cognitive and functional ability. Those with higher awareness reported lower mood, and lower scores on indices of living well as well as lower optimism, self-efficacy and self-esteem. Low awareness was more likely in those aged 80y and above, and living in more socially deprived areas. No relationship was seen between caregiver stress and awareness. Awareness of the condition and diagnosis varies in people with mild-to-moderate dementia and is relevant to the capability to live well. Awareness should be considered in person-centered clinical care.

Marginalization and stigmatization heighten the vulnerability of sexual minorities to inequitable health outcomes. Although men who have sex with men (MSM) are at elevated risk for HIV infection in India in comparison with the general population, there is a lack of MSM-focused research—particularly regarding stigma and mental health outcomes. This dissertation aimed to explore the influence of sexual stigma, gender non-conformity stigma and HIV-related stigma on depression and life satisfaction among MSM in South India. This study used a cross-sectional survey design and was conducted with MSM (n=200) in two locations in Tamil Nadu, South India: Chennai (urban) and Kumbakonam (semi-urban). Due to multicollinearity between sexual stigma and gender non-conformity stigma, the stronger predictor of each outcome (gender non-conformity stigma) was included in regression models. Results were analyzed to identify the associations between independent (gender non-conformity stigma, HIV-related stigma), moderator (social support, resilient coping) and dependent (depression, life satisfaction) variables. Due to significant differences between locations across a substantial number of variables, block regression analyses were conducted separately for each location. Higher levels of depression were predicted by gender non-conformity stigma in both locations, and also by HIV-related stigma in Kumbakonam. Lower levels of depression in both locations were predicted by higher levels of social support and resilient coping. Higher life satisfaction was predicted by social support and resilient coping in both Chennai and Kumbakonam. Lower life satisfaction was predicted by gender non-conformity stigma and HIV-related stigma in Kumbakonam, but not in Chennai. Social support and resilient coping did not moderate the impact of stigma(s) on depression or life satisfaction in either location. The results indicate that the majority of participants experienced stigmatization based on same-sex sexual behaviour and/or gender non-conformity. Another striking finding of the study was the alarmingly high rates of depression, whereby over half of participants in each region reported moderate to severe depression scores. Practice and policy implications include the development, implementation and evaluation of: multi-level stigma reduction interventions that account for socio-environmental and contextual factors; mental health interventions that promote resiliency and build social support; and policy initiatives to advance human rights protection.

<p>Gifted elementary students in a congregated educational program (n = 165) were compared to gifted peers in regular programming (n = 49) in an urban, Western-Canadian, public, school division. Mean scores on measures of self-concept (Multidimensional Self Concept Scale), classroom environment (Classroom Environment Scale), and student life satisfaction (Multidimensional Student Life Satisfaction Scale) were analyzed. MANOVAs revealed main effects of educational programming and no mediating effects of gender or grade level. Students in the congregated program had lower academic self-concept than students in regular programming, replicating the commonly found Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (Marsh, 1987). There was also some weak indication that students in the specialized program had lower satisfaction with "self" than those in the regular program. In contrast, students in the specialized program thought their programming to be more innovative relative to how the other group perceived theirs was. However, all differences were of small-to-moderate magnitude (.5 SDs). Moreover, all scores for all measures were at, or slightly above, levels typically found in normally developing peers. </p>

Marginalization and stigmatization heighten the vulnerability of sexual minorities to inequitable health outcomes. Although men who have sex with men (MSM) are at elevated risk for HIV infection in India in comparison with the general population, there is a lack of MSM-focused research—particularly regarding stigma and mental health outcomes. This dissertation aimed to explore the influence of sexual stigma, gender non-conformity stigma and HIV-related stigma on depression and life satisfaction among MSM in South India. This study used a cross-sectional survey design and was conducted with MSM (n=200) in two locations in Tamil Nadu, South India: Chennai (urban) and Kumbakonam (semi-urban). Due to multicollinearity between sexual stigma and gender non-conformity stigma, the stronger predictor of each outcome (gender non-conformity stigma) was included in regression models. Results were analyzed to identify the associations between independent (gender non-conformity stigma, HIV-related stigma), moderator (social support, resilient coping) and dependent (depression, life satisfaction) variables. Due to significant differences between locations across a substantial number of variables, block regression analyses were conducted separately for each location. Higher levels of depression were predicted by gender non-conformity stigma in both locations, and also by HIV-related stigma in Kumbakonam. Lower levels of depression in both locations were predicted by higher levels of social support and resilient coping. Higher life satisfaction was predicted by social support and resilient coping in both Chennai and Kumbakonam. Lower life satisfaction was predicted by gender non-conformity stigma and HIV-related stigma in Kumbakonam, but not in Chennai. Social support and resilient coping did not moderate the impact of stigma(s) on depression or life satisfaction in either location. The results indicate that the majority of participants experienced stigmatization based on same-sex sexual behaviour and/or gender non-conformity. Another striking finding of the study was the alarmingly high rates of depression, whereby over half of participants in each region reported moderate to severe depression scores. Practice and policy implications include the development, implementation and evaluation of: multi-level stigma reduction interventions that account for socio-environmental and contextual factors; mental health interventions that promote resiliency and build social support; and policy initiatives to advance human rights protection.

<p>Gifted elementary students in a congregated educational program (n = 165) were compared to gifted peers in regular programming (n = 49) in an urban, Western-Canadian, public, school division. Mean scores on measures of self-concept (Multidimensional Self Concept Scale), classroom environment (Classroom Environment Scale), and student life satisfaction (Multidimensional Student Life Satisfaction Scale) were analyzed. MANOVAs revealed main effects of educational programming and no mediating effects of gender or grade level. Students in the congregated program had lower academic self-concept than students in regular programming, replicating the commonly found Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (Marsh, 1987). There was also some weak indication that students in the specialized program had lower satisfaction with "self" than those in the regular program. In contrast, students in the specialized program thought their programming to be more innovative relative to how the other group perceived theirs was. However, all differences were of small-to-moderate magnitude (.5 SDs). Moreover, all scores for all measures were at, or slightly above, levels typically found in normally developing peers. </p>

Bakgrund: Bland alla personer som insjuknar i stroke, är en femte del yngre än 65 år och 5 % är yngre än 55 år. Efter stroke krävs ofta stora rehabiliteringsinsatser. Enligt flera studier och rapporter om personer i yrkesverksam ålder som insjuknar i stroke kan mindre än hälften återvända till förvärvsarbete. Problemformulering: Yngre personer med stroke kan uppleva att deras behov inte är tillgodosedda gällande rehabilitering och återgång till arbete. Syfte: Att kartlägga vad som påverkar yngre strokepatienters återgång till arbete. Metod: En allmän litteraturstudie, där fem kvantitativa och sex kvalitativa studier granskas. Meleis Transition Teori används som omvårdnadsperspektiv. Resultat: Att enbart klara av P-ADL är inte avgörande för återgång till arbete. Sänkt koncentrationsförmåga och kronisk trötthet återkommer i samtliga studier. Sociala faktorer som påverkar återgång i arbete är stöd från arbetsplatsen, arbetskamraterna, familj och vänner. Känslan av att behöva gå i förtidspension påverkar livssituationen och återgång till arbete. Även utbildningsnivå och vilket yrke strokepatienten har, påverkar. Slutsats: Unga strokepatienter behöver åldersanpassad rehabilitering och tydlig information. Vårdpersonal behöver tillgodose och erkänna att yngre strokepatienter kan ha andra behov. Kvinnor och män har dessutom helt olika krav på sin rehabilitering. / Background: Among all people suffering from stroke, a fifth part is younger than 65 and 5% are younger than 55 years. After a stroke the rehabilitation efforts are often considerable. According to several studies and reports of people of working age suffering from stroke, show that less than half return to gainful employment. Aim: Young people with stroke may find that their needs are not met regarding the rehabilitation and return to work. Objective: To identify the factors that influence young stroke patients return to work. Methods: A literature review, in which five quantitative and six qualitative studies reviewed. Meleis‟ Transition Theory is used as a nursing perspective. Results: To manage P-ADL is not decisive for returning to work. Deteriorated concentration and chronic fatigue was found in all studies. Social factors that influence return to work are: assistance from the workplace, colleagues, family and friends. The feeling of having to take early retirement affects life and return to work. Also education and the profession of the stroke patient affect. Conclusion: Young stroke patients need age-appropriate rehabilitation and direct information. Health professionals need to meet and recognize that young stroke patients may have other needs. Women and men are also quite different requirements for their rehabilitation.

The rapid change within the South African workplace and competitiveness of organisations required employed and unemployed individuals to be trained and retrained as a large number of the South African population is unskilled. In the chemical industry employability of individuals is of extra ordinarily importance to both employer and individual. One of the main focuses of the Chemical Industries Education and Training Authority (CHIETA) is to enable learners through the promotion of employability to enter into learnerships to develop the necessary skills to develop sustainable livelihoods (CHIETA, 2011). There are high expectations of the learnerships system which was implemented during 2001 in South Africa. This system is set as a key strategic component of the National Skills Development Strategy, 2011-2016. Learnership programmes are implemented in South African organisations which is a great platform for employee development. Employees are afforded the opportunity to broaden their knowledge in the studied field and gain the needed skills within the organisation (Department of Labour, 1997). Learnerships are seen as a demand driven formal labour market tool, to address the existing need for critical, scarce - high and intermediate - skills levels. Simultaneously, it is seen as an employment-creation mechanism at the low and intermediate skills levels. This statement is a fundamental principle of a survey done on learnerships (Smith, Jennings, & Solanki, 2005). Researchers concluded that learnership programmes are the ideal for employees to acquire the needed skills to become competent and to provide jobs for the unemployed and in this manner enhance employability (Smith et al., 2005). The main aim of article one was to determine the differences in the levels of the psychological contracts, violation of the psychological contract, learners‟ expectations, employability, life satisfaction and work engagement between individual variables (type of learnership contracts, gender, race, age, date of commencement of learnership, date of completion of learnership). A cross-sectional survey design was used. A total of 237 learners completed the questionnaire. The psychological contract scale, violation of the psychological contract scale, learners‟ expectations scale, employability scale, life satisfaction scale, work engagement scale and biographical scale were administered. The results indicated that a statistically significant difference was obtained for age, date of commencement of learnership and date of completion of learnership, but no relationship exists with type of learnership contract, gender and race. The aim of the second article was to determine the relationship between learners within learnership psychological contract, state of the psychological contract, expectations and violations of psychological contract, employability, work engagement and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the study strives to determine whether violation of the psychological contract, learners‟ expectations and employability could predict life satisfaction of learners. A practically significant relationship with a medium effect exists between violation of the psychological contract, state of psychological contract (negative), and employability (positive). A positive practically significant relationship exists between state of psychological contract and work engagement. No relationship was found between employability, life satisfaction and work engagement. A positive practically significant relationship with a medium effect exists between life satisfaction and work engagement. Employer obligations and employability predict life satisfaction. The state of the psychological contract (trust) and life satisfaction predict work engagement of learners. / MA (Labour Relations Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/ClaesAct/Dropbox/LNU%20psykologi/Uppsats/Examensarbete_ClaesLilja_HT16_2PS600.doc Physical exercise has been associated with various health benefits, including improved cognitive functioning, well-being and life satisfaction. Other variables that have been found to explain these areas include gender, age, dispositional optimism, meditation practice, and videogame habits. The aim of the present study was to explore whether physical exercise on its own has benefits for visuospatial rotation abilities and life satisfaction. It was also the intention to examine how other known factors of age, gender, dispositional optimism, meditation, and videogames may help predict visuospatial rotation abilities and satisfaction with life. The results showed no significant explanation for visuospatial performance while finding some exercise measurements and physical activity level to have significant correlations with life satisfaction. Dispositional optimism was found to be the strongest indicator of life satisfaction, while gender was determined to not hold explanatory power for either of the criterion variables.

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays in economics, all concerned with different aspects of subjective well-being. The abstracts of the four studies are as follows. Beyond Income: The Importance for Life Satisfaction of Having Access to a Cash Margin. We study how life satisfaction among adult Swedes is influenced by having access to a cash margin, i.e. a moderate amount of money that could be acquired on short notice either through own savings, by loan from family or friends, or by other means. We find that cash margin is a strong and robust predictor of life satisfaction, also when controlling for individual fixed effects and socio-economic conditions, including income. Decomposing Variation in Daily Feelings: The Role of Time Use and Individual Characteristics. I explore the potential of using time-use data for understanding variation in affective well-being. Using the Princeton Affect and Time Survey, I decompose variation in daily affect into explained and unexplained within- and between person variation. Time use is found to mostly account for within-variation. Hence, its explanatory power is largely additive to that of individual characteristics. The explanatory power of time use is small, however. Activities only account for 1–7% of the total variation and this is not increased much by adding contextual variables. The Association Between Life Satisfaction and Affective Well-Being. We estimate the correlation between life satisfaction and affect — two conceptually distinct dimensions of subjective well-being. We propose a simple model that distinguishes between a stable and a transitory component of affect, and which also accounts for measurement error in self-reports of both variables, including current-mood bias effects on life satisfaction judgments. The model is estimated using momentarily measured well-being data, from an experience sampling survey that we conducted on a population sample of Swedes aged 18–50 (n=252). Our main estimates of the correlation between life satisfaction and long-run affective well-being range between 0.78 and 0.91, indicating a stronger convergence between these variables than many previous studies that do not account for measurement issues. Do OLS and Ordinal Happiness Regressions Yield Different Results? A Quantitative Assessment. Self-reported subjective well-being scores are often viewed as ordinal variables, but the conventional wisdom has it that OLS and ordered regression models (e.g. ordered probit) produce similar results when applied to such data. This claim has rarely been assessed formally, however, in particular with respect to quantifying the differences. I shed light on this issue by comparing the results from OLS and different ordered regression models, in terms of both statistical and economic significance, and across data sets with different response scales for measuring life satisfaction. The results are mixed. The differences between OLS, probit and logit estimates are typically small when the response scale has few categories, but larger, though not huge, when an 11-point scale is used. Moreover, when the error term is assumed to follow a skewed distribution, larger discrepancies are found throughout. I find a similar pattern in simulations, in which I assess how different methods perform with respect to the true parameters of interest, rather than to each other.

Oral history is a method of preserving historical information through in-depth interviews. Because the process requires narrators to use remote recall while sharing their life experiences, it can also be considered a reminiscence-related activity. Before this study, the positive effects on narrators of providing an oral history were noted in the research literature but had not been evaluated through quantitative methods. Based on theoretical constructs of Erikson and Butler, it was hypothesized that participation in oral history interviews would improve the life satisfaction of narrators. Life satisfaction was operationalized and measured using the Life Satisfaction Index Version A (LSIA). The purposes of this study were to evaluate the influence of an oral history intervention on the life satisfaction of community-dwelling elders and to identify participant characteristics associated with change in life satisfaction scores.Sixty community-dwelling, older adults who were free of cognitive impairment and mental illness were recruited from agencies serving the social and recreational needs of elders in Richmond, VA. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group or a control group. LSIA scores were collected pretest, posttest, and again at retest, ten weeks after the intervention. Mean LSIA scores from the control and treatment groups were compared for differences at posttest and retest using an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Regression analysis was used to identify participant characteristics associated with improved life satisfaction at posttest and retest. Oral history interviews were conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University students enrolled in a gerontology course. Participants discussed lifetime events with students on three occasions for approximately one hour per session using a researcher-developed interview guide. No statistically significant differences in LSIA scores were found between groups at posttest (p=0.74) or retest (p=0.051) although retest scores may indicate a trend toward improvement. Lower LSIA scores at pretest were associated with positive change in LSIA scores at retest (p=5.001). These results suggest that oral history may not improve life satisfaction immediately but there may be a trend toward improvement given time and that elders least satisfied with their lives at the onset are most likely to show positive change by retest.