Denna uppsats har syftat till att undersöka downshifting som en livsstilsmigration till landsbygden samt belysa downshiftares flyttmotiv till landsbygden i förhållande till deras valda livsstil. Frågeställningar som uppsatsen har utgått ifrån är: vilka motiv påverkar downshiftare att flytta till landsbygden? samt hur upplever downshiftarna landsbygden som plats och hur möjliggör landsbygden deras livsstil? Forskningen beskriver downshiftning som en motrörelse till ett högt livstempo där det förespråkas att “växla ner”. Vi har uppmärksammat en trend där människor som downshiftar ofta flyttar till landsbygden som följd av sin livsstil och vi ville därför fördjupa oss i ämnet utifrån ett kulturgeografiskt perspektiv då detta inte undersökts tidigare. Vi har även uppmärksammat att det finns mindre forskning som rör intern livsstilsmigration inom Sverige och specifikt om livsstilsmigration till landsbygden. En stor del av forskningen kring livsstilsmigration har hittills behandlat internationell migration. I förhållande till de nämnda observationerna syftar därför studien till att undersöka downshifting som en livsstilsmigration.  Tidigare forskning kring downshifting, livsstilsmigration och plats utgör den teoretiska referensramen. Uppsatsen har utgått ifrån en kvalitativ undersökning med semistrukturerade intervjuer med downshiftare som flyttat från en större stad till landsbygden. Sammanfattningsvis genomfördes åtta intervjuer med endast kvinnliga respondenter, detta eftersom vi använde oss av snöbollsurvalet som uteslutande länkade till kvinnliga nätverk. Resultaten visar bland annat att de flesta flyttar till landsbygden för att kunna växla ner och hoppa av “ekorrhjulet” som de upplever är påtagligt i storstaden. I studiens slutsats har vi kommit fram till att flyttmotiv till landsbygden bygger på flera olika motiv som inte skiljer sig nämnvärt från de motiv som framkommit i tidigare forskning. Att flytta till landsbygden har fungerat som strategi för att kunna styra över sin egen tid eftersom de låga boendekostnaderna möjliggör för downshiftaren att kunna gå ner i arbetstid.

Hälso- och sjukvården är en arbetsplats där anställda dagligen ställs inför fysiska och psykiska påfrestningar. Då det inte är möjligt att eliminera alla riskfaktorer krävs istället en motståndskraft. Arbetsresurser i form av socialt stöd, inflytande, utvecklingsmöjligheter samt rolltydlighet kan bidra till engagemang och motivation. Även personliga resurser är viktiga för att hantera stressorer i såväl vardagen som arbetslivet, varav Känsla av sammanhang (KASAM) ses som en av de viktigaste personliga resurserna utifrån hälsa och hälsofrämjande. Studien syftade till att undersöka relationen mellan hälsa, KASAM och arbetsresurser bland anställda inom sjukvården med hjälp av en enkätundersökning utifrån skalorna SHIS, COPSOQ-II samt SOC-13. Analyser utfördes i form av korrelationer samt regressioner. Resultatet påvisade positiva samband mellan respondenternas hälsa och KASAM, hälsa och arbetsresurser samt KASAM och arbetsresurser. De arbetsresurser med starkast samband med respondenternas hälsa var inflytande samt rolltydlighet. Slutsatsen var att KASAM var den individuella faktorn med störst inverkan på hälsan. / In the health-care sector, workers are, on a daily level, exposed to physical and mental strain. Since it’s not possible to eliminate all risk-factors in the work environment, there’s a need for a resilience. Job resources, such as social support, influence, career-opportunity and role-clarity may contribute to engagement and motivation. Personal resources are also important to handle stressors, both at work and in personal life. Sense of Coherence (SOC) is often seen as one of the most influential personal resource in terms of health and health-promotion. The aim was to investigate the relations between health, SOC, and job resources in the health-care sector, using a questionnaire based on the SHIS, COPSOQ-II and SOC-13 scales. Analyses were made using correlations and regressions. Results showed positive relations between the respondent’s health, SOC and job resources. The individual job resources with the strongest relation, both to health and SOC was influence and role-clarity. Conclusion was that SOC was the individual factor with greatest influence on health.

Student Number : 8609483Y - MA Dissertation - School of Human and Community Development - Faculty of Humanties / This study undertook to investigate the validity of the Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC Scale) for use in South Africa. The scale was developed by Antonovsky (1987) and is widely used in stress and health research. It measures three components: meaningfulness, comprehensibility, and manageability, which Antonovsky posited as being central to a person’s sense of coherence (SOC), which in turn facilitates coping and personal resilience. The current research utilised two samples, namely a group of disabled individuals and a group of undergraduate psychology students. It found that while the SOC Scale is indeed a useful psychometric instrument within a South African context, it would be advisable to develop a modified version of the scale for local use. Factor analysis suggested that a three-factor solution is more appropriate than a one-factor solution, a finding which is congruent with Antonovsky’s theory. Suggestions are made for modifications to some of the original 29 items, as well as the subscales, of the SOC Scale.

Thesis advisor: Ce Shen / Civic engagement, involving people in public processes to achieve common goals, has received increased attention in the past several decades. This renewed interest was triggered by the seeming decline in civic engagement, particularly in the context of Western societies including the U.S. In addition, its potentially positive effects, such as psychological well-being at the individual level, have recently received much attention. Low-income people in developing countries suffer from double discrimination: first, the lack of opportunities to participate in civic matters due to their low socio-economic status (SES) and second, the lack of civil society culture in developing countries. However, less attention has been paid to civic engagement in the context of developing countries and low-income people, in spite of the importance of civic engagement to them. Given the significance of civic engagement for low-income populations in developing countries, this dissertation intends to fill the gaps left by previous scholarship. The following are specific objectives for the study: 1) Paper 1 aims to investigate the construct validity of an instrument to measure civic engagement among low-income populations in developing countries; 2) Paper 2 aims to examine the associations between country-level political and economic determinants and civic engagement among low-income people in developing countries; and 3) Paper 3 aims to examine the effect of civic engagement on subjective well-being through the mediating effect of sense of agency. Using the cross-national data set, the World Values Survey Wave 6 (2010-2014), this study first found that civic engagement among low-income individuals in low- and middle-income countries is defined in three dimensions: electoral behaviors, membership in civic organizations, and cognitive engagement. This result contributes to measurement development of civic engagement, especially among the low-income individuals in the context of developing countries, who have been neglected in policy-making processes. In Paper 2, I found that civic engagement increases in economically disadvantaged environments (low GNI per capita and high Gini coefficient). This finding may reveal the strength that low-income populations have. Lastly, the results of Paper 3 showed that electoral engagement and membership in civic organizations were directly related to well-being, but cognitive engagement had an indirect effect on well-being through a sense of agency. Also, the result of a non-recursive model showed that engagement in electoral behaviors leads to a sense of well-being, not in the reverse direction. The results from Paper 3 may demonstrate the mechanism by which civic engagement is related to well-being. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

My research study aimed to explore the pedagogic shifts between working with concrete to more abstract conceptions of number. By using a case study approach focused on a grade 2 (G2) Foundation Phase (FP) teacher who retained her class into grade 3 (G3), I gathered data on her teaching over two years (2012-13) in the context of the ‘Lesson Starters Project’ (LSP). In addition, the teacher also participated in another project within the Wits Maths Connect Primary project (WMC-P) which was focused on developing content knowledge related to primary mathematics during 2013. Whilst content knowledge course assessment indicated gains through this year, the teacher’s results indicated gaps in mathematical content knowledge - a feature that literature has highlighted as quite common amongst primary teachers in South Africa and internationally. My focus in this study is on the extent to which this teacher in the LSP professional development project specialised content and modes of representation and showed connections between these aspects. The findings showed that there were varying degrees of specialisation of content and specialisation of representations. In other words, the teacher is seen to make the mathematics more sophisticated in conjunction with the use of a variety of representations or strategies. There was evidence that the degree of shifts towards more abstract strategies depended at least partially on the teacher’s beliefs about the abilities of different learners in her class.

The objective of this study is to undertake research regarding Posttraumatic Growth and its relationship with Sense of Coherence, within the South African context. In addition, the associations between the three domains of SOC, in particular Meaningfulness, and the five domains of PTG, will be investigated. A further aim of this study is to explore whether the relationship between posttraumatic stress symptoms and Posttraumatic Growth is moderated by Meaningfulness. Sample: The sample consisted of tertiary education students, 18 years and older, and who have experienced a traumatic event as defined by the Traumatic Stress Schedule (N=79). Measures: In addition to a demographic questionnaire, the following measures were administered: the Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC), the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), the Impact of Event Scale - Revised (IES-R), and the Traumatic Stress Schedule (TSS). Results: Participants reported moderate scores on overall PTG with lower SOC scores relative to similar samples in the literature. Age was found to be associated with PTG, and PTG was associated with subjective distress as measured by the IES-R. In addition, those reporting PTG, particularly in the areas of Relating to Others, New Possibilities and Appreciation of Life, evidenced lower levels of Comprehensibility, and those low on Comprehensibility tended to report higher levels of subjective distress. High levels of subjective distress also appeared to be associated with lower levels of Manageability. Findings further suggested that participants who had been exposed to multiple traumas, as well as those who reported higher subjective distress, generally evidenced lower SOC. Multiple trauma exposures were strongly associated with increased subjective distress. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

ABSTRACT The negative impacts of trauma on clients are well known. However, the negative impact of working with traumatized clients on the counselor or helper has received less attention in the literature. Similarly, the contributions of certain work environments to experiences of compassion fatigue and the role of personality characteristics have gone unnoticed, especially in the South African context. The aim of this research is to examine the relationships between compassion fatigue, sense of coherence and work environment variables (job control, workload and collegial support), and to determine whether sense of coherence moderates the relationship between work environment and compassion fatigue on a sample of Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) practitioners in the South African organisational context (both public and private sectors). The current study adopted a non-experimental research design, categorised as cross-sectional and correlational. A non-probability sampling procedure was utilised. A sample of ninety-nine (99) EAP practitioners was obtained. A 10-items Job Control Scale (Wall, Jackson and Mullarkey, 1995), Workload and Collegial Support Scale by Dewe (1987) 11-items each, a 30- items Compassion Fatigue Self-Test Scale (Figley, 1995), and 13-items Orientation to Life Questionnaire (QLQ-13/SOC-13) by Antonovsky (1987; 1993) were administered. Results indicate that the sample in the current study were at higher risk of experiencing compassion fatigue. There was a positive significant relationship between workload, collegial support and compassion fatigue, a negative insignificant correlation between job control and compassion fatigue, and positive insignificant relationship between sense of coherence and compassion fatigue. The results between sense of coherence and the work environment variables were insignificant. Finally, sense of coherence was only found to moderate the relationship between workload and compassion fatigue and the relationship between collegial support and compassion fatigue.

Thesis advisor: Ana M. Martínez-Alemán / College students today are the most connected and social media savvy generation in the history of higher education (Junco & Cole-Avent, 2008) and maintain constant connections to online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (Clem & Junco, 2015). Social media are now understood as a central component of campus and student life across colleges and universities (Martínez-Alemán & Wartman, 2009). Coinciding with the proliferation of social media use has been a rise in racialized hostilities on online settings. These offenses often target racially minoritized students, and scholars have become increasingly interested in understanding the ways this antagonism on social media impacts college student experiences (Tynes, Rose, & Markoe, 2013), including Asian Americans (Museus & Truong, 2013).         This dissertation uses a critical race theory framework to examine the racialized environment on social media, how Asian American college students experience racialized aggressions, and how their sense of belonging is impacted by racially hostile online encounters. This dissertation addresses the following question: How do encounters with racialized aggressions on social media impact Asian American students’ sense of belonging at a PWI? 29 participants from a predominantly white institution, East Oak University, engaged in individual interviews, participant observations, artifact collection, and focus groups as part of this study. The findings of this study suggest that the encounter of racialized aggressions on social media, especially those on the anonymous platform Yik Yak, are detrimental in facilitating positive sense of belonging among Asian Americans at East Oak. These online racialized encounters are asserted to be rooted in the endemic nature of racism at East Oak, and the claiming of social media as a property that enabled Whites to define and dictate campus culture by engaging in racist discourse. The nature of these online communications speaks to the ways that social media is suggested to influence both sense of belonging and institutional racial climates on today’s college campuses. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Humans as well as animals are born with a number sense, an innate ability to make approximations (Dehaene, 1997). However, low numeracy is an issue today and have a larger impact on the individuals lives than poor reading abilities (Parsons & Bynner, 2006). To be able to understand the cause of developmental dyscalculia the fully functional brain coping with numbers must be further investigated. The aim of this study is hence to examine how the number sense develop during maturation. Seven children and seven adults (all healthy) have participated in this neuro imaging study. The participants were required to perform a non-symbolic mathematic task and a control task both outside and within the scanner. The results indicate a transition of active areas in the brain during maturation. In the children prefrontal areas were recruited, and for the adults the activation was primarily found in the parietal cortex. These findings, despite low statistical power indicates a shift of neural activity from a more cognitive demanding task into an automated task. Further studies will have to replicate the experiment to validate the findings of this study.

This study seeks to understand ways in which members’ experience a sense of belonging within Sephora’s own commodified community: Beauty Insider. Three research questions are presented, the final one being of highest importance: in which way do members of Beauty Insider experience a sense of belonging? To be able to understand the members, previous research is presented where Muniz & O’Guinn’s (2001) study on Brand Communities is essential, as well as the study conducted by Dholakia et al. (2004) on participation within communities. To better understand what activities members engage in within communities, a theoretical framework based on fan cultures, consumer culture and participatory culture is presented to gain a better understanding of the aspects of a community. This study will approach the research questions mainly using focus group interviews, as well as a necessary description of the discourse content of the platform to better understand the context of the study. The study concludes by presenting a result and an analysis that is, mostly, in line with previous research as well as discovering new aspects of members attitudes towards Beauty Insider and which meaning members experience as a result of participating in different activities within the community.