ABSTRACT The aim of this quantitative study was to investigate if stress, self-efficacy and life satisfaction varied with gender and age. The sample was selectively chosen in the municipality, country council, private sector and in the trade business. 237 participants were included in the study, of which 94 were men and 143 were women. Age was split in two categories: younger adults (18-40 years) and older adults (41-65 years). The results showed that there were correlations between the dependent variables: stress, self-efficacy and life satisfaction. The results also showed that: gender has an effect on stress and that age has an effect on stress and self-efficacy. There was also a significant interaction effect between gender and age for stress: younger women reported the highest stress among the groups. No other significant interaction effects for self-efficacy and life satisfaction were found. Keywords: Stress, self-efficacy, life-satisfaction, gender, age. SAMMANFATTNING Syftet med den här kvantitativa studien var att undersöka om stress, self-efficacy och livstillfredsställelse skiljer sig i ålder och kön. Stickprovet utfördes selektivt på arbetsplatser inom kommun, landsting, privata sektorn och inom handel. 237 deltagare var med i studien varav 94 var män och 143 var kvinnor. Ålder delades upp i kategorierna: yngre vuxna (18-40 år) och äldre vuxna (41-65 år). Resultatet visade att det fanns samband mellan de tre beroende variablerna: stress, self-efficacy och livstillfredsställelse. Resultatet visade även att: kön har en effekt på stress och att ålder har en effekt på stress och self-efficacy. Det fanns även en signifikant interaktionseffekt mellan kön och ålder för stress där yngre kvinnor rapporterade högst stress. Inga andra signifikanta interaktionseffekter för self-efficacy och livstillfredsställelse fanns. Nyckelord: Stress, self-efficacy, livstillfredsställelse, kön, ålder

SAMMANFATTNING   Bakgrund: Whiplashrelaterade besvär är vanligt förekommande efter en bilolycka. En behandling för dessa patienter är steloperation av övre nackkotpelaren. Dock finns lite forskning kring hur detta i allmänhet och i synnerhet ur ett beteendemedicinskt perspektiv kan påverka en patient. Syfte: Var att utvärdera om steloperation av övre nackkotpelaren hade effekt för två patienter med långvariga whiplashrelaterade besvär, avseende vissa beteendemedicinska aspekter innehållande psykologiska och kognitiva funktioner. Metod: Experimentell single–subject studie som innehåller baslinje-, interventions- och uppföljandemätningar (A1-B-A2 design). Två personer med whiplashrelaterade besvär som skulle genomgå steloperation av övre nackkotpelaren, deltog i studien. Dessa skattade i frågeformlär kring beteendemedicinska aspekter vid två tillfällen under 14 dagar före och 6 veckor, 3, 6 och 12 månader efter operation. Deltagarna skattade även dagliga aktiviteter med hjälp av dagbok, vid dessa tillfällen och under 14 dagar före operation. Resultat: Båda deltagarna uppvisade förbättringar i de flesta uppmätta aspekterna vid 12 månader, jämfört med första skattningen före operationen. I två av deltagarnas dagliga aktiviteter ses signifikanta skillnader efter operationen jämfört med baslinjeskattningarna. Slutsatser: Steloperation av övre nackkotpelaren har en positiv effekt för dessa patienter och ökar deras self-efficacy, minskar rörelserelaterad rädsla, katastroftankar, ångest/depressivitet, funktionsnedsättning, whiplashsymptom, ökar livskvalitet samt minskar smärta/hinder i dagliga aktiviteter.   Nyckelord: Fusion, katastroftankar, livskvalitet, rörelserädsla, self-efficacy whiplashrelaterade besvär. / ABSTRACT   Background: Whiplash associated disorders are common problems after a car-accident. One treatment for these patients is a fusion of the upper neck vertebra. However, there is little research available about how this treatment in general and in particular from a behavioural medicine perspective can affect a patient. Purpose: To evaluate if a fusion of the upper neck vertebra had an affect for two patients with prolonged whiplash associated disorders, concerning some behavioural medicine aspects including psychological and cognitive functions. Method: Experimental single – subject study containing baseline-, interventions- and follow up measurements (A1-B-A2 design). Two persons with whiplash associated disorders scheduled for fusion of the upper neck vertebra, participated in the study. They fulfilled questionnaires about behavioural medicine aspects at two occasions during 14 days before and at 6 weeks, 3, 6 and 12 months after the operation. The participants also rated disability and pain intensity in daily activities in a journal at these occasions and during 14 days before the operation. Results: Both participants showed improvements in most of the measured aspects at 12 months, compared to the baseline before the operation. In two of the participants’ daily activities significant differences could be seen compared to the baseline measures. Conclusions: A fusion of the upper neck vertebra has a positive effect for these patients and increases their self-efficacy, decreases kinesiophobia, catastrophizing, anxiety/depression, impairment, whiplash symptoms, increases neck functioning, quality of life and decreases pain/disability in daily activities.   Keywords: Catastrophizing, fusion, kinesiophobia, quality of life, self-efficacy, Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD).

Syftet med denna studie är att få kunskap om hur tiden som arbetsslös kan påverka individens motivation som arbetssökande. Den övergripande frågeställningen är om motivationen till att hitta ett jobb skiljer sig mellan kort- och långtidsarbetslösa ungdomar. Motivationen har här undersökts genom att jämföra om kort- och långtidsarbetslösa skiljer sig i upplevd locus of control, self-efficacy, värdet av ett arbete samt upplevda krav och faktisk nedlagd ansträngning. 106st arbetslösa ungdomar, samtliga inskrivna på Arbetsförmedlingen, deltog i enkätundersökningen. Resultatet visade inga signifikanta skillnader mellan kort- och långtidsarbetslösa i motivationen till att hitta ett arbete. En begränsning i undersökningen är att skillnaden i tid mellan grupperna kort- och långtidsarbetslösa är liten. / The purpose of this study is to gain knowledge on how time of unemployment may affect an individual's motivation in the search of a job. The main issue is whether the motivation to find a job differs between short and long term unemployed young people between 18-26 years of age. The motivation has been examined by comparing the short-and long-term unemployed differ in perceived locus of control, self-efficacy, the value of a work, and perceived requirements and actual effort spent. 106 unemployed youths, all registered at the Employment Service, participated in the survey. The results showed no significant differences between short-and long-term unemployed in the motivation to find work. A limitation of the study is that the difference in time between the groups short-and long-term unemployed is small.

Background. To give birth can be a stressful experience and women cope with thisstress in many different ways and have different personal outcomes. Self-efficacy orconfidence in ability to cope with labour can be considered as an important factoraffecting pregnant women’s motivation of normal childbirth and their interpretation ofthe childbirth event.The aim. The purpose of this study was to test the Chinese short form of theinstrument Childbirth self-efficacy instrument (CBSEI) in Tanzania, that measurepregnant women’s self-confidence and coping abilities during childbirth.Method. The Chinese short form of the CBSEI was used to pilot test the pregnantwomen’s confidence of childbirth to see if the questions were understood in theTanzanian culture. Besides this instrument socio-demographic data was collectedtogether with two open questions asking about attitudes and experiences of childbirth.The instrument was translated into Kiswahili. A sample of 60 pregnant women whowere visiting antenatal clinic (ANC) regularly were asked to participate and with helpfrom midwifes at two ANC places the questionnaires were filled out.Result. The result shows that the validity and reliability of the two subscales OE-16and EE-16 were established. The internal consistency reliability of the two subscaleswere high, suggesting that each of the subscale mean score provides a good overviewof self- reported belief in coping ability for childbirth.The results further show that the instrument, CBSEI in this pilot study is not able toidentify women who need extra support during childbirth.Conclusion. The reliability and validity of information presented in this pilot studysupport the use of the Chinese short form of the CBSEI as a research instrument in theTanzania culture. Further studies are recommended to get a wider understandingabout women’s coping abilities in a culture like Tanzania.

The stress-strain relationship has been the mainstream of the occupational stress research. The stressor-strain relationship is the very definition of occupational stress; stress in the work environment cause individual strain (e.g., anxiety, depression, and burnout). According to recent research, people tend to appraise stress as potentially promoting their personal growth and achievement (i.e., challenge stress) should be distinguished the stress from people tend to appraise stress as potentially constraining their personal development and work-related accomplishment (i.e., hindrance stress). These two types of stress are differentially associated with affective and behavioral responses. Moreover, the scholars argued that the next step for work stress research should move to investigating variables that moderate the stress, strain, and work outcomes relationship. Literature reviews show that numerous researches argued that job control is an important environmental moderator that has received special attention in the occupational stress literature. However, the moderating effects are much more inconsistent. As scholars suggested self-efficacy is a theoretically important attribute of individuals in job strain that is believed to have a stress-buffer effect of job control on psychological well-being. In other words, self-efficacy may have the conjunctive moderating effect with control on the relationship between stress, strain, and outcomes. The present research aims to study the relationship between challenge-hindrance stress, burnout and affective commitment, and the role of environment- and individual-related resources (i.e., job control, self-efficacy as possible conjunctive moderating factors between stress and its effects on burnout and affective commitment). The participants of this study were 435 governmental employees of the Customs Office. The data were collected as a two-wave study with a six-month time lag in order to diminish the effects of common method variance. The results demonstrated as follows: 1. Challenge stress is positively associated with emotional exhaustion, and does not significantly associate with cynicism and affective commitment. Hindrance stress is negatively associated with affective commitment, and does not significantly associate with burnout. 2. Job control has the moderating effect on the relationship between challenge stress, cynicism, and affective commitment. 3. Job control and self-efficacy played as the conjunctive moderators on the relationship between challenge stress and burnout.

Abstract In the era of globalization,trades and professions stress competitiveness; Government institution in Taiwan have also begun to emphasize on improving it. Self-efficacy results are often influenced by accountability and job satisfaction as well as the self-efficacy. This study conducted and survey on Government institution in Taiwan to investigate relationship among those variables. This study proposes a concept of self-efficiency of government institution staff. accountability and job satisfaction are thevariables in this study. Subjects were sampled from National Immigration Agency in Taiwan. There were 300 sample government institution staff in total.Additionally, there were 300 questionnaires received and 250 are effective. Conclusion: General accountability and job satisfaction have different effect on self-efficacy.

A Study On The Relationship Among Teachers' Professional Identity¡BSelf-Efficacy And Job Satisfaction In Junior High Schoo In Kaohsiung City Abstract This research is mainly study on the present relationship among teachers' professional identity, self-efficacy and job satisfaction in Junior High School in Kaohsiung City. This study try to investigate how the different backgrounds as variebles will affect the relationship that this research focus on junior high school teachers, and find out the differences those variebles will cause . Also, the research aims to make an analysis about using Junior High School teachers' professional identity and self-efficacy to predict their job satisfaction . The research use questionnaire survey. We use Teachers' Professional Identity, Self-efficacy and Job Satisfaction Questionnaire in Junior High School in Kaohsiung City as our research tool. Subjects were sampled from 78 Junior High Schools in Kaohsiung city and 5846 teachers by using random sampling. The collected date were analyzed by using statistical computer software SPSS version 17.0. The main findings are as following: 1. The whole performace of teachers' professional identity in Junior High School in Kaohsiung city was middle-high level. Among the sectional scores,the dimension of " the job invlovement " was the highest. 2. The whole performace of teachers' self-efficacy in Junior High School in Kaohsiung City was middle-high level. Among the sectional scores, the dimension of "normal educational efficacy " was the highest. 3.The whole performace of teachers' job satisfaction in Junior High School in Kaohsiung city was pretty well. Among the sectional scores, the dimension of "salary and welfare" was the highest. 4. There were positive relationship among teachers' professional identity, self-efficacy and job satisfaction in Junior High School in Kaohsiung City. 5. Teachers' professional identity could predict the job satisfaction. In front of all factors, the value of concept could predict most. There are some researcher¡¦s suggestions as to provide a reference for educational institutes, teacher-training organizations, administrative units of school and teachers in junior high schools and the further research plans.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among the Kaohsiung junior high school teachers¡¦ Personality Traits, Professional Identity and Self-Efficacy and to understand the predictability of Self-Efficacy by Personality Traits and Professional Identity. The research method this study adopted was survey research. Questionnaires were mailed to 560 junior high school teachers of Kaohsiung city in Taiwan. There were 529 valid responses, and the success rate was 94.45%. The collected data were analyzed by using the statistical methods of reliability analysis, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson Product-moment correlation, canonical correlation and multiple regression (step-wise-regression procedure). The conclusions of this study were as follows: 1.Junior high school teachers¡¦ Personality Traits did not differ significantly in age, education background, years of teaching experience, and working position, but differed significantly in gender, marriage and school size. 2.Junior high school teachers¡¦ teaching style did not differ significantly in gender, age and years of teaching experience, but differed significantly in marriage, education background, working position and scales of school size. 3.Junior high school teachers¡¦ Self-Efficacy did not differ significantly in age, marriage, education background, years of teaching experience, and working position, but differed significantly in gender, scales of school size. 4.There were significant correlations found between junior high school teachers¡¦ Personality Traits and Professional Identity, Personality Traits and Self-Efficacy, Professional Identity and Self-Efficacy. 5.The performance of junior high school teachers¡¦ Personality Traits, and Professional Identity effectively predicted the performance of Self-Efficacy, especially the ¡§Professional attitude¡¨ aspect. Based on the conclusion above, this study provided suggestions respectively on the institute of educational administration, junior high school and future studies.

In the past, a considerable amount of research has been conducted into the effects of congruence between information display and task requirement on decision-making performance. The theoretical base for these works is the cost-benefit framework, which explains that the effort of decision makers will depend on the level of accuracy expected and the cost of the strategy employed to complete the task. In this research, the factor of self-efficacy is integrated into the cost-benefit framework for predicting decision making performance. An experiment was designed with two factors, display congruence and self-efficacy. The display congruence is a within-subject factor with 2 levels, high congruence and low congruence; the self-efficacy is a between-subject factor with 2 levels, high versus low. Subjects¡¦ eye movements were also tracked with an apparatus, eye tracker. A total of 30 subjects participated in the experiment and 20 were found to be valid based on an analysis of the eye movement data. These subjects were divided into high and low self-efficacy groups according to their scores of self-efficacy measurement. The results show that when the congruence is low, subjects spent significantly longer decision time and changed information acquisition direction than they do when the congruence is high, although there was no difference in decision accuracy between these two conditions. Self-efficacy is found to significantly predict goal commitment, intensity of effort, and decision accuracy. In addition, when subjects moved from the situation of high congruence display to the low congruence one, high self-efficacy subjects were found to increase their level of effort more than low self-efficacy subjects.

Diverse employment nowadays, such as short-term hiring, human resource outsourcing, flexible worktime, and part-time appointment, shows the coming age of a diversified employing. This phenomenon derives a changing relationship between organizations and employees. Through this change, how to perceive and further motivate knowledge worker to achieve optimal labor output becomes an important issue. Different interpretation on psychological contract is a result of different personal perception, sense of value, and message interpretation. Therefore, this thesis sees the personal psychological contract as independent variable and investigates how personal psychological contract plays a role in personal knowledge intake. Furthermore, this thesis also sees self-efficacy as intervening variable and analyzes how self-efficacy involves in personal psychological contract and knowledge learning aspirations of employees.Based on the data from 993 employees from 80 firms analyzing, the researcher obtained the following findings: 1. The difference: a. Gender, educational degree, and job position revealed difference with regard to psychological contract. b. Gender, marriage, age, educational degree, and job position revealed difference with regard to firm-specific knowledge learning aspiration. e. Marriage, Age and job position revealed difference with regard to general knowledge learning aspiration. 2. The relationship: a. Relational and balanced psychological contracts are positively related to firm-specific knowledge learning aspiration. b. Transactional psychological contract has negative relation with firm-specific knowledge learning aspiration. c. Self-efficacy is positively related with general and specific knowledge learning aspiration.