Climate persuasive services, a type of persuasive technology, could benefit significantly from having a well designed goal-setting feature to actually get users to reduce their carbon emissions. This study explored monthly carbon budgets as a tool for goal-setting to motivate carbon emission reductions. The study focused on how self-efficacy and reflections from budgeting carbon affected motivation. A prototype for a carbon budget planner was developed for the study and was designed to only motivate users intrinsically so external rewards or prompts were avoided in the design. Participants in the study got to use the prototype and were interviewed around the themes of reflection, self-efficacy and motivation. The results proved it difficult for the participants to plan the monthly carbon budget as there were different ways to think about it. Though most of the participants were aware of their climate impact, the carbon budget planner gave them new perspectives on their carbon emissions and lifestyle. Different calculation methods between the climate calculator and the prototype made it uncertain if participants actually felt they could keep a budget which reduced their emissions. In the end almost all participants felt more motivated to reduce their carbon emissions after the study. / Climate persuasive services, en typ av persuasive technology, skulle kunna dra nytta av att ha en väl utformad målsättningsfunktion för att få användarna att faktiskt minska sina koldioxidutsläpp. Den här studien utforskade månatliga koldioxidbudgetar som ett verktyg för målsättning för att motivera koldioxidutsläppsminskningar. Studien fokuserade på hur upplevd självförmåga och reflektioner från budgetering av koldioxid påverkade motivation. En prototyp för en koldioxidbudgetplanerare utvecklades för studien och utformades för att endast ge inre motivation till användarna så externa belöningar eller prompter undveks i designen. Deltagarna i studien fick använda prototypen och intervjuades kring teman av reflektion, upplevd självförmåga och motivation. Resultaten visade att det var svårt för deltagarna att planera den månatliga koldioxidbudgeten, eftersom det fanns olika sätt att tänka på det. Även om de flesta deltagarna var medvetna om deras klimatpåverkan gav koldioxidbudgetplaneraren deltagarna nya perspektiv på sina koldioxidutsläpp och sin livsstil. Olika beräkningsmetoder mellan klimatkalkylatorn och prototypen gjorde det osäkert om deltagarna faktiskt kände att de kunde hålla en budget som minskade utsläppen. I slutändan kände nästan alla deltagare sig mer motiverade för att minska sina koldioxidutsläpp efter studien.

Soil is essentially irreversibly damaged when covered with impervious artificialsurfaces, a process known as soil sealing. Previous research on soil sealing policiesmainly studied strategies for effective local policy implementation. However, ifeffective implementation of soil sealing policies is to be considered, soil sealing policiesshould be on the local agenda. Therefore, this master thesis explored the local agendasetting of soil sealing. It drew on the Multiple Streams Approach and studied the agendasetting with respect to problem recognition, policy generation and actors’ engagement.Four Swedish municipalities with urban areas where soil sealing was already on thelocal agenda were examined. An analysis of policy documents and interviews withmunicipal civils servants and politicians enabled a comparison of the local agendasetting processes of soil sealing. The results showed general similarities in the problemrecognition by indicators and feedback, but differences in the importance of focusingevents. In one municipality, a focusing event in the form of a flooding seems to havepushed the issue of soil sealing to the local agenda. A powerful symbol, with whichproblems with soil sealing were recognized as a problem of the ethnicity of the citizens,was arguably used in one municipality. The role of consultants, the importance ofinspiration from other municipalities and the value acceptability of soil sealing policiesin the policy generation process were similar across all municipalities. In onemunicipality, researchers’ involvement was significant in the policy generation process.Regarding actors’ engagement, this master thesis showed that politicians were notconsidered as engaged with soil sealing by civil servants across all municipalities.However, according to all interviewed politicians, they considered themselves asengaged with issues of soil sealing. Moreover, policy entrepreneurs most probably hadan important role in the agenda setting of soil sealing in one municipality only.

This study was conducted to determine if visualized goal achievement can help enhance East Asian Chinese students‟ motivation in learning and elevate their confidence in reaching their goals thus improving their performance. The goal achievement was visualized on a goal achievement progress chart that was self-created and self-managed by the East Asian Chinese students and the goal creating was under the supervision of their instructor. In this study, literature reviews on the theories, previous research studies in the perspectives of East Asian students‟ motivation in learning, goal setting on motivation, self-determination, self-efficacy, and expectancy theories are conducted to provide theoretical ground and legitimate evidence for this particular research. The researcher conducted an experiment in which students were given a learning task and required to set their own learning goals for that learning task under the supervision of their instructors. In this specific experiment, a total of 106 students from a university that was funded by American Educators in a central province in China agreed to participate in stages one, and two of the study, but some students withdrew from this research and some did not participate in both research stages therefore their data were take out from the data to make research result more consistent. Therefore eventually 72 students were considered eligible to go through the whole process of turning in the questionnaires and participating in the performance test. In this particular goal setting research study, the students were given the freedom of setting their own learning pace iii and managing their own progress on a visualized progress chart. The progress chart was visualized as a climbing/progressing line, which goes from bottom to top (see appendix C) once students achieved their learning goals. At the same time, the instructor provided feedback concerning the students‟ progress. Although some of the research results displayed no statistical significance for motivation and self-confidence during the pre and post session of the research, there is a positive correlation among motivation, self-confidence, and performance outcome. One research result did corroborate the previous research study that goal setting strategy would improve learning outcome.

INTRODUCTION. Assessing the participation experiences of young people with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities (SIDD) in recreational activities is imperative to ensure these activities provide youth with optimal opportunities to develop skills needed for adulthood. Currently, no instrument accessible to youth with SIDD is available to asses these experiences. The Participatory Experience Survey (PES) and the Setting Affordances Survey (SAS) were developed to meet this need. METHOD. The PES was developed with input from a panel of youth with SIDD while they were participating in a summer program. A draft was then presented to three groups of stakeholders: parents of youth with SIDD, service providers, and experts in intellectual disability and/or program planning. After making revisions based on stakeholder feedback, cognitive interviewing was conducted with eight youth ages 14 – 22 with SIDD. Next, to examine feasibility of the PES, the survey was given to 10 youth with SIDD. After finalizing a draft of the PES based on youth feedback, questions for the SAS were written to align with topics on the PES. Finally, a program evaluation was conducted that provided an additional feasibility evaluation of the PES and SAS. RESULTS. Of the 24 initial questions on the PES, stakeholder groups identified 15 questions needing revision and suggested 7 additional questions. Youth feedback during cognitive interviewing identified 13 questions needing revisions and 4 needing removal. Changes were made to address three issues: word choice, understanding of concept, and questions relating to others. Administering the PES directly following an activity was found to be feasible, however, the length was shortened from 31 to 15 questions to provide an appropriate administration time (<5 minutes). CONCLUSION. The PES and the SAS proved to be relevant, accessible and feasible ways to assess the individual experiences of youth with SIDD in recreational settings and the affordances, measured objectively, of those settings. Use of these two measures may help programs to include young people with SIDD during program evaluations, resulting in better-structured, more supportive programs.

In this essay the framing of the politics of the two prime minister candidates Magdalena Andersson and Ulf Kristersson have been analyzed. This during two interviews broadcasted before the election 2022 on public service channel 1 (SVT 1) in a program called Election 2022: The Hearing (Val 2022: Utfrågningen). The study has looked at several different types of framing including thematic, episodic and gameframing to be able to analyze how the politics are portrayed. The study has also acknowledged the importance of the power relations that take place between interviewee and journalist in a political interview. Also how the role of the journalist acting as a program manager affects the framing of the politics. The conclusion is that politics are framed in all kinds of framing analyzed. But there are differences between how Andersson and Kristersson´s politics are framed through the analyzed frames. The program managers had different strategies to confront the politicians depending on who they interviewed.

U.S. politics, media, and citizens are highly polarized, stipulating that society is divided between Democrats and Republicans (Hameleers, 2019). The U.S. has seen an increased political polarization over the past 25 years (Heltzel & Laurin, 2020; Westfall, Van Boven, Chambers, & Judd, 2015). Technological development in the campaign environment has fueled this political polarization (Hong & Kim, 2016). In such a polarized technological society, partisan news media cover political issues and events from their ideological perspective (Arceneaux, Johnson, & Murphy, 2012), which may affect the polarized citizens.The Republican Party is conservative, while the Democratic Party is liberal (Westfall, Van Boven, Chambers, & Judd, 2015). Each party has issue agendas that they prioritize during the campaign. When political campaigns post a message on social media, they not only post just one issue but several related issues. These interlinked issues have a networked effect on the partisan news media and the polarized citizens (McCombs, Shaw, & Weaver, 2014). How political campaigns interlinked different issue agendas during campaigns in a polarized environment has not been investigated. This study intends to see the similarities and dissimilarities between the Democratic and Republican Party issue networks using a network agenda setting theory during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign and how they build and set networked issue agendas in the partisan news media and the polarized public on Facebook. The study uses a hybrid content analysis and network analysis of issue agendas presented by the Biden and Trump campaigns, partisan media (CNN and Fox News), and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party supporters on Facebook. Facebook posts are collected using Facebook’s CrowdTangle Search option from January 1, 2021, to November 3, 2020. This study uses a hybrid content analysis method which engages with both human coders and computational means to analyze big data sets (Guo et al., 2016). The data analysis involves measuring core-periphery block model, clique analysis, network visualization, and Quadratic Assignment Procedures (QAP). A social networking analysis software, UCINET, is used for measuring core-periphery block model, clique analysis, and QAP correlations(Borgatti, Everett, & Johnson, 2018). The scholarship of political campaign communication needs to reconnect to the ideological positions of political campaigns, partisan news media, and party supporters. This holistic study is significant in terms of better understanding the mechanism of networked agenda-setting activities of presidential campaigns in a polarized environment on Facebook. Methodologically, this study offers new techniques for investigating networked issue agendas of campaigns, news media, and citizens. It uses core-periphery block model and clique analysis as indicators of network agenda building and network agenda-setting influences. Social media practitioners like campaign managers can consider the political polarization, fragmented nature of social media, and polarized audience during political campaigning.

This paper aims to introduce the reader to the premium setting of annuities within life insurance. This is done using a hypothetical annuity contract offered to 36-year-olds in Sweden. The contract provides an annual pension from age 65 until either the individual's death or age 90, after which payouts cease. The analysis employs life tables using real-life data to estimate mortality, discounting to decide present values, and calculates fair and risk-adjusted premia for lump sum and annual payment options using theory and simulations. Ultimately, we found that the method used was insufficient given the data. This is due to the last decades' rise in life expectancy, requiring us to use other methods to acquire accurate premia. / <p>Detta arbete omfattar 3,0 hp och är en del av kursen Matematisk kommunikation (MM7020), 7,5 hp.</p>

The goal of this investigation is to explore the relationship of health provider communication techniques and their impact on patient understanding, satisfaction, and self-efficacy. This investigation looked at the two specific communication techniques of concern elicitation and mutual agenda setting which occur during the beginning of a medical visit. Encounters were recorded with patient knowledge and transcribed to be analyzed. Following a coding manual created from both previous research and original input, the transcripts were organized and read through to process data. Focusing on the two communication techniques—concern elicitation and mutual agenda setting—I looked at the beginning of the encounter to note any usage of the techniques. Using a series of independent samples t-tests, I found that patient understanding was significantly correlated with concern elicitation. At the same time, the length of visits that used concern elicitation and mutual agenda setting was not significantly greater than the length of visits in which these techniques were not used. This implies using these communication techniques clinical practice does not risk losing precious time. This investigation can also give support to more in depth research on various other communication techniques and their potential benefits in bridging the disparity in health literacy.

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Independent confessional schools have been a heavily discussed subject in Sweden in recent years. At the same time, the spread of information is shifting more and more from the religious institutions themselves to be controlled by the media according to the mediatization theory. This paper aims to investigate what arguments are used, and which themes can be identified in the discussion about confessional schools in Sweden in two large newspapers using qualitative thematic analysis. Moreover, the investigation is using a quantitative approach to find out if the question about confessional schools have gained more or less attention during recent years, looking at the number of publications from Swedish newspapers. The findings show that the number of publications has risen quite drastically in the last 15 years, and the years with the highest peaks correlate with the election years in 2018 and 2022, which both were election years in Sweden. Moreover, the paper aims to gain a better understanding about how we can relate that discourse to mediatization theory. Meaning that the media plays a big part in controlling the narrative, together with the audience. The results in this investigation are quite similar to previous research concerning what type of themes that can be identified in the discussion and debates about confessional schools. The investigation also highlights some difficulties in the legislation and decisions made to control how confessional schools in Sweden are being run.