This thesis examined how women cope with various types of body-related discrepancies, such as those related to their physical appearance, and their effects on eating behavior. The Hierarchical Action-Based Model of Inconsistency Compensation, an integrative model comprising tenets from the action-based model of dissonance (Harmon-Jones et al., 2009) and Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), was used as a guiding framework to understand motivational differences in compensation processes and eating behavior following a body-related discrepancy. This objective was achieved through three studies broken down into two articles. The first study (Article 1; N = 398) used a mixed method cross-sectional design and examined the types of body-related discrepancies women face, their contextual elicitors, and motivational differences in the propensity of experiencing them. Following the recollection of such experiences, the associations between women’s motivation for eating regulation and eating intentions, and the mediating role of dissonance-based processes in these relationships, were examined. Results revealed that women, in general, experience discrepancies related to the appearance and care toward their body. These experiences were often elicited by body exposure (e.g., reflection in the mirror) and occurred in a non-social-evaluative context. Additionally, women with more controlled eating regulation experienced more discrepancies in eating quality and physical activity. Furthermore, results demonstrated that women with more autonomous eating regulation intended to engage in more healthy eating in response to a body-related discrepancy, whereas women with more controlled eating regulation intended to engage in more disordered eating. These distinct pathways were partly explained by differences in self-compassion, and consequently dissonance arousal, and selection of behavioral (versus cognitive) compensation strategies. The second study (Article 2; N = 107) replicated findings from Study 1 by exposing women to a mirror while being instructed to talk about their body in a non-social-evaluative (n = 52) or a social-evaluative (i.e., presence of two female judges; n = 55) context. Dissonance was experimentally manipulated in an additive fashion (i.e., mirror versus mirror and social evaluation) to determine whether motivational differences in dissonance processes and eating behaviors were contingent upon the evaluative nature of the context. Results partly replicated findings in Study 1, such that women with more autonomous eating regulation intended to engage in more healthy eating following mirror exposure (ME), and this relationship was partly explained by engagement in behavior modification strategies, whereas women with more controlled eating regulation intended to engage in more disordered eating following ME. These relationships persisted across ME conditions. Finally, the third study (Article 2; N = 199) used the same paradigm as Study 2 with the additional manipulation of women’s self-related body talk during ME, such that women were instructed to engage in positive/compassionate (social-evaluative n = 47; non-social-evaluative n = 52) or negative (social-evaluative n = 48; non-social-evaluative n = 52) body talk. This allowed us to observe the effects of positive and negative body talk on women’s eating behaviors and the moderating role of motivation following ME. Results demonstrated that women with more controlled eating regulation benefitted from counter-attitudinal (positive/compassionate) body talk during ME as indicated by more intent to engage in healthy eating behavior. Taken together, results suggest that increased salience of body-related discrepancies negatively affects women’s ability to regulate their eating if they do so for more controlled reasons. This is partly attributed to low emotion regulation resources and use of avoidant compensation strategies. However, these negative implications on their eating behavior can be alleviated via dissonance by facilitating the restructuring of body-related cognitions in contexts that typically elicit body-related discrepancies.

The present study was designed to obtain a sexual self-discrepancy score and to examine if it correlates with other variables that are linked with self-discrepancy theory, such as anxiety, depression, self-acceptance, and other-acceptance (homonegativity). We developed a measure based on self-discrepancy theory that theoretically assessed a participant's level of discrepancy between sexual beliefs and practices. The questions on sexual beliefs were based on the "ideal/ought" dimensions of self-discrepancy theory, and the questions on sexual practices were based on the "actual" self. There were less than 10 participants of the 294 respondents who reported sizeable discrepancies between their sexual attitudes and actual behaviors. This was problematic in light of the original research hypothesis, so a decision was made to treat the present study as exploratory in nature and examine potential correlations between beliefs, behaviors, and the study variables, as well as examine potential gender differences in beliefs and behaviors. Using the available data, I elected to regress the study variables on the two constructs that were pivotal to this study: sexual beliefs and sexual behaviors. Taken together, the study variables significantly predicted sexual beliefs. The individual variables that contributed significantly to the prediction of sexual beliefs were (in order of magnitude): religiosity, attitudes toward gays and lesbians, and self-esteem. Higher levels of religiosity, prejudice toward gays and lesbians, and low self-esteem were associated with limited acceptance of sexual activity. Age, self-acceptance, and symptoms of maladjustment were not associated significantly with sexual attitudes.

Research indicates that African American women breastfeed at the lowest rates of any racial/ethnic group in the U.S. Breastfeeding has shown to have numerous health benefits for both mother and baby, making the lower rates of breastfeeding among African Americans a public health concern. Racial disparities in healthcare may contribute to these discrepancies. This research will analyze the perceptions of information and social support for breastfeeding provided by healthcare providers among a sample of African American mothers who breastfed their babies. The study asks: Do participants regard their healthcare providers as supportive of breastfeeding? Data were collected through in-depth qualitative interviews with 22 African American mothers. Participants interpreted their providers’ opinions on breastfeeding and formula and discussed whether they felt supported to breastfeed. Findings reveal which healthcare providers were perceived to be the most supportive of breastfeeding and themes within the time-frame codes: pregnancy, labor and birth, immediately after birth, and postpartum. The majority of participants felt supported during the first three stages. However, during the postpartum period, there was a lack of assistance from healthcare providers, resulting in limited breastfeeding support. Participants that did receive postpartum support typically received verbal affirmation, rather than given useful information.

Background: Studies of complex and big-ticket tenders such as construction contracts have been the main research focus of public procurement. The efficiency of these low frequency transactionsis inherently hard to study, since the real world offers a wide range of variables that could explain the discrepancies. What is not studied to large extents are high frequency transactions, with low transaction volume, of common goods. These purchases are mostly overlooked due to the lack of documentation that exists, primarily explained by the low degree of digitalization and transparency on smaller contracts/transaction that fall below the EU reporting thresholds.Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the existence of price discrepancies for homogenous goods in public procurement between Swedish municipalities. Furthermore, provide insight and possible explanations to this phenomenon in accordance with economic theory.Method: This study opted to use a quantitative method of research to look at different municipalities and their procurement invoices. The quantitative data has been compiled and adjusted to comparable numbers, so that differences can be identified with clarity.Conclusions: The study concludes that there are significant price discrepancies for homogenous goods in the public procurement sector. With price variations ranging from being negligible to paying twice the price. The selected theoretical framework points towards opportunism and asymmetric information being the main sources of the price discrepancies. Improvement could possibly be made by shifting policies towards further digitalization of the procurement process and horizontally integrating the public sphere. In turn reducing asymmetric information and transaction costs, making less room for opportunistic behavior due to improvements in ex ante and ex post costs. From the results of the empirics, a speculative cost saving potential of 7.90 % is estimated.

Few studies have examined whether performance feedback on a given task can have implications for motivational processes on an altogether distinct task. The present study proposes and tests a model for motivational spillover in a goal-setting context. Participants (N = 201) were provided with goal-performance discrepancy feedback (GPD) on a creativity task (CT) and were subsequently asked to complete an unrelated stock-predicting task (SPT). Results indicate that GPD feedback on the CTs was positively associated with positive affect such that negative GPDs resulted in low levels of positive affect and positive GPDs resulted in high levels of positive affect. This positive affect was in turn positively related to self-efficacy for the SPT. Self-efficacy was positively associated with personal goals, and goals were positively related to performance on the SPT. These findings provide initial evidence for the occurrence of positive and negative motivational spillover in a natural performance setting. / Ph. D.

Medication errors increased 64.4% from 2015 to 2018 in the United States due to the use of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems and the inability to exchange information among health care facilities. Healthcare information exchange (HIE) and subsequent discrepancies resulted in significant medical errors due to the lack of exchangeable health care information using technology software. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the strategies health care business managers used to manage computerized physician order entry systems within health care facilities to reduce medication errors and increase profitability. The population of the study was 8 clinical business managers in 2 successful small health care clinics located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with health care leaders and documents from the health care organization as a resource. Inductive analysis was guided by the Donabedian theory and sociotechnical system theory, and trustworthiness of interpretations was confirmed through member checking. Three themes emerged: standardizing data formats reduced medication errors and increased profits, adopting user-friendly HIE reduced medication errors and increase profits, and efficient communication reduced medication errors and increased profits. The findings of this study contribute to positive change through improved health care delivery to patients resulting in healthier communities.

<p>The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate health-related quality of life (HRQoL), anxiety and depression in patients with endocrine gastrointestinal (GI) tumours. Patient as well as staff perceptions were assessed. HRQoL was studied with the EORTC QLQ-C30, and anxiety and depression with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. In addition, patient perceptions of the importance of and satisfaction with selected HRQoL aspects were investigated. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were conducted to identify disease- and treatment-related distress, what constitutes a good quality of life and strategies to "keep a good mood" among these patients. Patients reported a relatively good HRQoL and low levels of anxiety and depression. However, they reported a lower HRQoL than could be expected for healthy people of similar age and gender. Staff gave a more pessimistic view of patient satisfaction with HRQoL aspects than did patients, and staff did not accurately judge individual patients' levels of anxiety and depression. Importance>satisfaction discrepancies for HRQoL aspects may identify patients with a low quality of life. HRQoL, anxiety and depression did not change substantially during the first year of treatment. Categories identified through content analysis of interview data concerning distress and quality of life were referred to physical, emotional or social dimensions. Identified strategies to "keep a good mood" were classified as Internal or External. Most categories of distress that were identified are covered by the EORTC QLQ-C30 and/or the HADS, but some additional emotional and social aspects of distress emerged from the interview data. Receiving good care was identified as a strategy to "keep a good mood". This result indicates a possible and potentially important relation between the quality of care and patient HRQoL.</p>

The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate health-related quality of life (HRQoL), anxiety and depression in patients with endocrine gastrointestinal (GI) tumours. Patient as well as staff perceptions were assessed. HRQoL was studied with the EORTC QLQ-C30, and anxiety and depression with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. In addition, patient perceptions of the importance of and satisfaction with selected HRQoL aspects were investigated. Semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were conducted to identify disease- and treatment-related distress, what constitutes a good quality of life and strategies to "keep a good mood" among these patients. Patients reported a relatively good HRQoL and low levels of anxiety and depression. However, they reported a lower HRQoL than could be expected for healthy people of similar age and gender. Staff gave a more pessimistic view of patient satisfaction with HRQoL aspects than did patients, and staff did not accurately judge individual patients' levels of anxiety and depression. Importance&gt;satisfaction discrepancies for HRQoL aspects may identify patients with a low quality of life. HRQoL, anxiety and depression did not change substantially during the first year of treatment. Categories identified through content analysis of interview data concerning distress and quality of life were referred to physical, emotional or social dimensions. Identified strategies to "keep a good mood" were classified as Internal or External. Most categories of distress that were identified are covered by the EORTC QLQ-C30 and/or the HADS, but some additional emotional and social aspects of distress emerged from the interview data. Receiving good care was identified as a strategy to "keep a good mood". This result indicates a possible and potentially important relation between the quality of care and patient HRQoL.

Minimization of HLW inventories and U consumption are key elements guaranteeing nuclear energy expansion. The integration of complex nuclear systems into a viable cycle yet constitutes a challenging multi-parametric optimization problem. The reactors and fuel cycle performance parameters may be strongly dependent on minor variations in the system's input data. Proven discrepancies in nuclear data evaluations could affect the validity of the system optimization metrics. This study first analyzes various advanced AP1000-VHTR fuel cycle scenarios by assessing their TRU destruction and their U consumption minimization capabilities, and by computing reactor performance parameters such as the time evolution of the effective multiplication factor keff, the reactors' energy spectrum or the isotopic composition/activity at EOL. The performance metrics dependence to prompt neutron fission spectrum discrepancies is then quantified to assess the viability of one strategy. Fission spectrum evaluations are indeed intensively used in reactors' calculations. Discrepancies higher than 10% have been computed among nuclear data libraries for energies above 8MeV for 235U. TRU arising from a 3wt% 235U-enriched UO2-fueled AP1000 were incinerated in a VHTR. Fuels consisting of 20%, 40% and 100% of TRU completed by UO2 were examined. MCNPX results indicate that up to 88.9% of the TRU initially present in a VHTR fueled with 20% of TRU and 80% of ThO2 were transmuted. Additionally, the use of WgPu instead of RgPu should reduce the daily consumption of 235U by 1.3 and augment core lifetime. To estimate the system metrics dependence to fission spectrum discrepancies and validate optimization studies outputs, the VTHR 235U fission spectrum distribution was altered successively in three manners. keff is at worst lowered by 1.7% of the reference value and the energy spectrum by 5% between 50meV and 2MeV when a significantly distorted fission spectrum tail is used. 233U, 236Pu and 237Pu inventories and activities are multiplied by 263, 523 and 34 but are still negligible compared to 239Pu mass or the total activity. The AP1000-VHTR system is in conclusion not dependent on the selected fission spectrum variations. TRU elimination optimization studies in AP1000-VHTR systems will be facilitated by freeing performance metrics dependency from 1 input parameter.

Background: Discrepancies in patient’s medication list can lead to medication errors which is a major cause of both morbidity and mortality today. The aim of the study was to examine the frequency of discrepancies in the Swedish prescription list “My saved prescriptions” regarding noncurrent treatment, incorrect dosages, double prescriptions, and missing prescriptions. Additionally, the purpose was to examine the type of source of information the patients used regarding their drug treatment.   Methods: Collection of data was conducted through interviews at three different pharmacies over a period of four weeks in Stockholm 2020. Patients 18 years or older with at least three prescribed drugs were asked to participate in the study.   Results: Of 157 patients, 74 patients were included. More than 70% of the patients had one or more discrepancies in their prescription list: a noncurrent, a duplicate or an incorrect dosage. 17.6% had at least one missing prescription. About half of the patients had a noncurrent prescription, which was the most common discrepancy among the patients. More than a third, 35.1%, of the patients used the prescription list as a source of information for their drug treatments. Furthermore, 31.1% of the patients used the drug packaging and 17.6% of them only used their memory. 10.8% of the patients used the medication list from healthcare.  Conclusions: The results suggest that discrepancies were quite common in the prescription list, which can increase the risk of medication errors for patients who use the prescription list as a source of information. The implementation of the Swedish National List (NLL) (launching in 2021) will provide the caregivers, pharmacies, and patients with access to the same information about patient’s prescribed drugs. NLL will hopefully reduce the risk of medication errors and it should lead to a reduced necessity of using several different sources for prescribed drugs.