<p>Background: Tanzania is a country which faces several development challenges. The villages in this essay are located in a rural part of central Tanzania. The area experiences severe environmental conditions in addition to poverty and other related problems. Therefore, there are attempts to improve the situation by forming groups on local level. The two projects studied aim to improve the environment and the members’ economy by planting and selling trees. The participants are women only, except the supervisors who are men in both projects.</p><p>Purpose and Question at Issue: The purpose is to examine if the project which the women participate in is affected by their sense of place. This is perceived through the examination of problems and possibilities faced by the women in their daily lives as well as in the project, and how these are managed and dealt with. The aim is to see if there is a correspondence between how different situations are dealt with by the individual and if this too can be related to the sense of place.</p><p>Method: The majority of the material was gathered through field studies but additional information was achieved through literature studies, earlier research, observations in field and informal conversations. Interviews were carried out with participating women in the studied projects. The method followed the guidelines of grounded theory and the interviews were designed with Dolbeare’s and Schuman’s three-interview series in mind. A minor quantitative study was also carried out by handing out a questionnaire to the women in the projects.</p><p>Theory: The theoretical framework builds on Tuan’s development of the meaning of sense of place, which is made up of people’s feelings, experiences and relations to a certain place. Closely related to sense of place is Bourdieu’s structural theory of habitus, why this is also considered a part of the theoretical framework.</p><p>Analysis: The material gathered through the field studies is analyzed in relation to the purpose and question at issue. Sense of place is defined by using various categories of the concept, which aim to encompass several aspects and therefore give a more nuanced picture of the meaning of place for the individual. The women were found to relate the place first and foremost to their family, social bonds and daily chores and to a lesser extent with the environment.</p>

<p>Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka om möjliga själv är relaterade till personlighet och känsla av sammanhang samt huruvida kön och ålder påverkar dessa relationer. Studien genomfördes på kadetter genom en enkätundersökning. Enkäten bestod av bakgrunds frågor, yrkesrelaterade möjliga själv (The Possible Selves Statements Test), personlighet (The Five Factor Personality Inventory) och känsla av sammanhang (KASAM). Resultatet visar att kluster (K-means) av personlighetsprofiler inte skiljer sig signifikant åt vad gäller möjliga själv, däremot uppvisades skillnader mellan personlighetsprofilerna vad gäller känslor och förväntningar kring möjliga själv. Liknande resultat erhölls avseende relationen mellan KASAM och möjliga själv. Kön och ålder påverkar inte dessa relationer.</p> / <p>The aim of this thesis is to study if possible self is related to personality and sense of coherence, and if gender and age has any influence on those relationships. A questionnaire was distributed to cadets. It contained background, work related possible selves (The Possible Selves Statements Test), personality (The Five Factor Personality Inventory) and sense of coherence (KASAM). The results showed that different clusters (K-means) of personality profiles do not differ significantly in possible selves. Differences were found between the personality profiles considering feelings and expectations around possible selves. Similar results were found considering the relationship between sense of coherence and possible selves. Gender and age didn’t influence those relationships.</p>

<p>Sense of coherence, SOC, is a way to study health and wellbeing in a salutogen perspective. SOC is a theory that Aaron Antonovsky came up with and it involves three elements; comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. These three elements is a objective way to look at our existence. The aim of this study was to examine how high the pupils sense of coherence was in the grades 1, 3 and 6 in a school in Karlstad. And with the result as starting point have a discussion around the pedagogical consequences and which educational work procedures we can use to work with SOC in school. It turned out that the students sense of coherence had a high mean value and that it got even higher through the grades.</p><p> </p><p>The study will underlie for further development in this subject field and work as a foundation for further studies around the theory SOC.</p>

Objects move, collide, flow, bend, heat up, cool down, stretch, compress and boil. These and other things that cause changes in objects over time are intuitively characterized as processes. To understand common sense physical reasoning and make programs that interact with the physical world as well as people do we must understand qualitative reasoning about processes, when they will occur, their effects, and when they will stop. Qualitative Process theory defines a simple notion of physical process that appears useful as a language in which to write dynamical theories. Reasoning about processes also motivates a new qualitative representation for quantity in terms of inequalities, called quantity space. This report describes the basic concepts of Qualitative Process theory, several different kinds of reasoning that can be performed with them, and discusses its impact on other issues in common sense reasoning about the physical world, such as causal reasoning and measurement interpretation. Several extended examples illustrate the utility of the theory, including figuring out that a boiler can blow up, that an oscillator with friction will eventually stop, and how to say that you can pull with a string but not push with it. This report also describes GIZMO, an implemented computer program which uses Qualitative Process theory to make predictions and interpret simple measurements. The represnetations and algorithms used in GIZMO are described in detail, and illustrated using several examples.

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (MCom)--PU for CHE, 1999.

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2005.

Urban forest management is being increasingly recognized as a viable policy vehicle for improving the overall quality of life in urban regions, promoting economic well-being as well as mitigating some of the environmental impacts of urbanization. As a complex system of ecological merit, the urban forest is ultimately dependent upon community-directed efforts to protect and maintain its health, largely through tree ordinances. An understanding of how values and other social factors trigger public concern for and management of the local urban forest is important because of ramifications of community urban forestry policy on regional ecosystem functional capacity. This dissertation investigates the influence of individual experience with trees, knowledge about trees, and tree-related attitudes and beliefs on public support for management strategies to protect the urban forest. Attitude theory forms the foundation of the empirical approach used in this study. Drawing from place theory, attitudes representing Sense of Place were hypothesized to also play a role in explaining variation in homeowners’ support of urban forest protection strategies. Data were obtained from a public opinion survey of 800 homeowners living in a major urban area in Southern Appalachia and joined with measurements of tree canopy density. Geographic information systems software was used to create measures of tree canopy density from Light Detection and Ranging data for varying aerial extents around the survey respondents’ properties. Theoretical constructs were formulated and deployed in structural equation models to test the validity of the hypothesized relationships among the constructs, representing predictors of public support for urban forest protection policy. The modeling results showed that place-based contexts are significant in the prediction of community willingness to support higher levels of urban forest protection. Findings from this study suggest that although the presence of urban trees in one’s neighborhood leads a homeowner to place greater importance on various attributes of trees, this does not automatically lead to support for strong tree ordinances. One also must have a basis of attachment to tree places, which is predicted by tree knowledge and experience with caring for trees around one’s home. In conclusion, limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

Clinical information systems are being introduced into nurses’ work at an alarming rate. These systems are implemented with limited input from nurses who provide direct patient care, and without considering human factors in the systems design and implementation process. The need for nurses to be involved at every level of decision-making as it relates to technological innovation into their work is imperative to mitigate system failure and truly support their work. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is two-fold: 1) to discuss evidence that suggests that the nurse is not really viewed as an end user in most clinical information systems implementations and 2) to describe the implications of this misperception to the nurse, organization, and nursing profession.