Tidigare forskning som undersökt relationen mellan alkoholkonsumtion, Big Five personlighetsfaktorerna samt känsla av sammanhang utfördes med fokus på riskbruk eller på populationer utanför Sverige. Därför testade denna studie samband mellan alkoholkonsumtion och (a) Big Five personlighetsfaktorerna, (b) KASAM, (c) utbildning samt demografiska variablerna (d) kön och ålder bland högskolestudenter i Sverige. Resultatet kan bidra till forskning om alkoholkonsumtion samt vara av intresse för initiativ som försöker begränsa alkoholkonsumtion. Urvalet bestod av 115 deltagare (64 kvinnor, 50 män och 1 ospecificerad. M = 24.64 år SD 4.27 år). Alkoholkonsumtion mättes med AUDIT-C, Big Five mättes med BFM och KASAM mättes med SOC-13. Alkoholkonsumtion korrelerade signifikant endast med en variabel, extravertion. Negativa korrelationer fanns mellan variabeln riskbruk av alkohol och variablerna KASAM och kön, i riskgruppen fanns fler kvinnor än män. Eftersom urvalet i riskgruppen var lågt hade det varit intressant för framtida forskning att undersöka denna relation igen med högre deltagarantal.

SammanfattningFöreliggande studie har undersökt om det finns personlighetsskillnader mellan ingenjörsstudenter och en normgrupp. Testet vi använt oss av är baserat på de fem faktorerna i The big five och ärvidareutvecklat av rekryteringsföretaget A lot of people till testet B5 personlighetsprofil. Det nätbaserade personlighetstest har skickats ut till ingenjörsstudenter vid svenska högskolor ochuniversitet. Sammanlagt genomförde 184 studenter testet och deras svar har jämförts med en normgrupp bestående av 1215 individer. Respondenternas svar har analyserats med hjälp av oberoende t-test där vi funnit signifikanta skillnader mellan grupperna i tre av de fem faktorerna. Ifaktorerna vänlighet/behaglighet och öppenhet för nya erfarenheter visade ingenjörsstudenterna ett lägre resultat än normgruppen, medan de i faktorn emotionell stabilitet hade högre värden.Prestation/samvetsgrannhet och extroversion visade inga signifikanta resultat. Dessa resultat anknyts till ingenjörsyrket genom en diskussion och problematisering av personlighetstestning. / <p>Abstract</p><p>The present study has examined the differences in personality between engineering students and a norm group. The test used in this study is based on the five factors of The big five and is further</p><p>developed by the recruitment company A lot of people to a test named B5 personlighetsprofil. The test was taken online and has been sent to engineering students in Sweden. This resulted in 184</p><p>respondents which the study is now based on. The test-results has been analyzed by using an independent t-test, where significant differences between the groups where found in three out of the five factors. The engineering students showed lower values in the factors agreeableness and openness to experience, while they had higher values in the factor emotional stability.</p><p>Conscientiousness and extraversion showed no significant results. These results are connected to the engineering profession through the discussion and problematization of personality testing.</p><p>Program: Organisations- och personalutvecklare i samhället</p>

Given the large economic and social costs of work-related accidents and injuries, it is not surprising that organisations strive to reduce them; this creates a need to improve the safety performance of the whole construction industry. Health and Safety statistics in general appear to suggest a levelling off of safety performance across the construction industry as a whole and this implies that improving safety beyond the current level of attainment calls for a radical look at how safety is addressed by the industry. Such a radical approach needs to explore alternatives to current practices in safety improvement. Although it is acknowledged that human factors are involved in 80-90% of work-related accidents and incidents, the focus of safety research in recent years still addresses only organisational and environmental factors, rather than variables at the level of the individual. Occupational personality models suggest that the ability to understand, predict and control incidents could minimize their potential transition into accidents. The safety behaviour of the individual worker forms part of such occupational personality modelling. Understanding the safety behaviour of construction workers should provide opportunities for improvement beyond traditional practices in the quest to improve safety management. The study on which this thesis is based aimed to develop a conceptual framework for improving safety performance on sites. This was achieved by exploring, on the one hand, the relationship between the personality traits of individual workers and their safety behaviour (safety participation, safety compliance and safety motivation), and incident rates on the other. The data for the analysis was drawn from multi-cultural construction workers in Saudi Arabia. The emergence of the Big Five personality model has been widely accepted as a valid and reasonably generalisable taxonomy for personality structure and has been used by numerous researchers as a framework to explore the criterion-related validity of personality in relation to job performance. This study employed the Big Five categorisation of traits to explore the relationship between fundamental dimensions of personality and potential for involvement in accidents and incidents. The principal findings from the study showed a very good level of acceptance by practitioners in Saudi Arabia for the conceptual framework developed for managing safety behaviour. The study also established that some personality traits moderated the effects of safety behaviour for incident rates. In addition, the analysis revealed that individual workers characterised by conscientiousness and openness are least likely to experience incidents, and consequently, accidents and injuries at work. However, individuals characterised by high extraversion, neuroticism and low agreeableness are more likely to be v involved in incidents, and potentially, accidents and injuries. These important findings have significant ramifications for the way safety development and training for construction workers should be addressed in the future. Recommendations from the study culminated in the development of a conceptual framework for improving safety performance which aimed to minimize incidents attributable to the worker. The framework relies on the attitudes and behaviours of employees in proposing mitigation strategies for the construction industry.

Syfte och frågeställningar Syftet med studien var att undersöka om det fanns ett samband mellan kondition och personlighetsdrag. Sekundära ändamål var att vidare undersöka hur sambandet ser ut vid indelning av kön, samt undersöka sambandet mellan självuppskattat rörelsemönster och personlighetsdrag. Studiens frågeställningar var följande: 1) Finns det ett samband mellan beräknad maximal syreupptagningsförmåga och femfaktormodellens personlighetsdrag hos gymnasieelever? 2) Vid ett hypotetiskt samband mellan beräknad VO2max och femfaktormodellens personlighetsdrag, hur ser sambandet ut vid indelning av kön? 3) Finns det ett samband mellan självuppskattat rörelsemönster och femfaktormodellens personlighetsdrag hos gymnasieelever? Metod Studiepopulationen bestod av totalt 74 gymnasieelever i ett åldersspann mellan 15-18 år, varav 39 var män och 35 var kvinnor. Deltagarna fick fylla i en enkät om ålder, kön, längd, vikt och rökvanor samt om rörelsevanor. I samband med detta genomgick deltagarna personlighetstestet Big Five Inventory, ett test som skattar personlighetsdragen Öppenhet (Ö), Samvetsgrannhet (S), Utåtriktning (U), Vänlighet (V) och Neuroticism (N) utifrån Femfaktormodellen. VO2max beräknades genom att deltagarna fick springa ett 2,4 km cooper test i skolan under deras idrottslektion. All data utvärderades genom att utföra sambandsanalyser mellan personlighetsdrag och VO2max samt övriga variabler från enkäten. Resultat På helgrupp visades en tendens till att ju mindre av personlighetsdraget N deltagarna hade desto högre var deras beräknade VO2max (r:-0,225, p:0,054). Ett signifikant samband hittades mellan S och självskattad vardagsmotion på helgrupp (r:0,31, p:0,009). Kvinnorna uppvisade ett signifikant samband mellan Ö och beräknat VO2max (r:-0,339, p:0,047). Slutsats Resultaten tyder på ett samband mellan personlighetsdrag och VO2max samt rörelsemönster men att sambandet skiljer sig åt mellan män och kvinnor. Generella slutsatser är att män och kvinnor som skattar lågt i N och kvinnor som skattar lågt i Ö har mer sannolikt ett högre beräknat VO2max än de som skattar högt. Hög skattning i S verkar tyda på ökad vardagsmotion. Det krävs fler studier med mer precision inom ämnet för att bekräfta eller avfärda eventuella samband.

The Big-Five is the most popular personality taxonomy used to characterize fundamental personality traits and their individual differences. This model has been well replicated across English speaking samples, several other languages, and different item formats, thereby begging the question of its universality. However, two key issues have challenged the validity of the cultural group comparisons using Big Five measures of personality. The first is methodology for translation and adaptation, and the second is construct equivalence across cultures. The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1992) has been used to create several non-commercial versions of Big Five measures (IPIP-BFMs), with a common set of 50 items typically translated into other languages and used for cross-cultural comparisons. Although this 50-item version is available in more than 25 languages, little is known about how translation and adaptation was executed, and only a few researchers have reported psychometric characteristics of scores from the translated measures. The consistent lack of such evidence to support the use of the standard American set of the 50-items in other languages gave rise to the idea of developing a customized 50-item IPIP that would better fit the Thai culture. The goal of this study was to develop and thoroughly validate scores from a Thai version of the 50-item IPIP Big Five measure of personality using a sample of 1,878 students from high schools in Thailand. One hundred items from the IPIP website were translated into the Thai language following guidelines developed by the International Test Commission (ITC, 2017). When psychometric properties for the original 50-item IPIP-BFM were investigated in Thai and American samples, weaknesses in model fit were detected. Using the more complete set of 100 items from the IPIP website, 50 items more suitable to the Thai culture were then selected to create a customized Thai 50-item IPIP. Scores from the customized 50-item IPIP-BFM were further examined for psychometric properties across Thai and American samples. The customized Thai 50-item IPIP-BFM produced good internal subscale reliability coefficients (> 0.80), a clear five-factor structure across Thai and American samples, measurement invariance across subgroups within the overall Thai sample, similar patterns of convergent and discriminant validity with another Big Five measure, and statistically significant incremental validity over standardized achievement and aptitude test scores in predicting end of high school grade-point average. Collectively, these results demonstrate that the customized 50-item IPIP-BFM produces psychometrically sound scores for measuring the Big Five with Thai adolescents. Procedures used in the study also provide a template for developing and validating new personality instruments for use with native speakers of other languages.

Research has shown that young children have some understandings of death. However, adults are hesitant (or even avoidant) to discuss death with young children for fear that they will scare them, or they are not sure what to tell them. Sessions were part of this project, educating adults in a child’s development and how that development affects what young children understand about death. The three sessions, completed over two weeks, included three topics including anxieties the adult may have about death, cognitive and emotional development of the young child, and the adult’s role in discussing death with young children. Participants completed a pre- and post-test. Results indicated that adults felt more comfortable discussing the death of a person with a young child, as well as feeling less avoidant of having those discussions.

The diagnosis of schizophrenia has been associated with increased risk of violence and aggression. However, the extent of this association in relation to displayed personality traits among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have not been fully investigated. The lack of research has resulted in an inability to determine why only some individuals with schizophrenia display violent tendencies when others do not. Guided by Costa and McCrae's five-factor model of personality and Eysenck's theory of personality and crime, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the five personality traits and the display of violence among individuals with schizophrenia, as well as the predictability of violence. A personality assessment was used to explore the personality of the participants (n = 111), individuals obtained by convenience sampling of data originally collected by Ohi, Shimada, and Kawasaki. Each of the participants included had been diagnosed with schizophrenia by at least two clinical physicians. One-way analyses of variance were performed for each of the five personality traits in order to distinguish any relationships. A binary logistic regression model was conducted in order to discover a model of predictability in regards to violent behavior among individuals with schizophrenia. Results confirmed previous research findings of a statistically significant relationship between neuroticism and violence. However, adding to the research was the result of a significant contribution of neuroticism in the prediction of violence among schizophrenics. Positive social changes arising from these findings include practitioners having the future abilities of designing specific treatment options for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia based on personality.

This thesis assesses the usefulness of the five phase spiral model as an explanation of the changes in the Chinese government's human rights practices from the time of the "antirightist" campaign in 1957-58 to the end of 2003. Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink's spiral model focuses on the constitutive relationship between a target state and international human rights norms by exploring the influence of a transnational network promoting these norms on the human rights practices of the target state. The thesis concludes that the spiral model has provided a valid explanation for many of the changes in the Chinese government's human rights practices, and its responses to its internal and external critics, from 1957 to 2003. Many of the responses of the transnational human rights network and the Chinese government by the end of this period indicate that the latter had progressed to phase three of the model. Some aspects of the Chinese government's practices and relationships with its more powerful state critics can be better explained by the alternative explanations examined here, neorealism and modernisation theories. However, constructivist approaches, and in particular the spiral model, are more effective in explaining the developing pattern of communication about the validity of human rights norms. This thesis also concludes that the spiral model only conceptualises part of the constitutive relationship between the target state and international human rights norms - the influence of these norms on the identities, interests and behaviours of a target state. / It does not conceptualise the influence of a target state on international human rights norms or the transnational human rights network. Therefore, the spiral model cannot explain why the Chinese government has had such a significant influence over the enforcement mechanisms of these norms. An explanation for this is found instead by combining elements of neorealism and constructivism.

This thesis examines the risk and internationalisation practices of International New Ventures (INVs) in the environmental sector. The purpose of the research is to make observations regarding the manner in which environmental INVs manage risk when internationalising.The literature review focuses upon the published literature that relates to INVs, risk and risk management, mode of entry and the environmental sector. Section one of the literature review provides the characteristics of what constitutes an INV. Section 2 provides a review of the risk literature, this allows the differences between Multi National Enterprise (MNE) and INV risk and risk management to be reviewed. Section 3 takes the international business risks mentioned in section 2 and relates them to the mode of entry literature (i.e. the internationalisation of firms). The final section of the literature review is used to justify the investigation into the water pollution and control sector of the environmental industry. The research question is 'What strategies do environmental INVs use when entering new international markets?' The research question is broken into five specific research questions and addressed using the Repertory Grid process. The Repertory Grid process is used as it can turn the tacit knowledge held by the participants into explicit knowledge. The results show areas of convergence and divergence between practice and academia. The results also suggest new issues that need to be considered when firms internationalise. This culminates in the observations made in regard to the way environmental INVs manage risk when internationalising.

<p>Small and medium enterprises play an important role in the development of a country. </p><p>The growth of SMEs is also important for the world economy which has been widely </p><p>discussed in recent years. Although the growth of small firm is a well known topic in </p><p>theoretical research, still there are some research gaps that need to be filled. There is </p><p>no single multidimensional theory which would embrace all possible approaches; </p><p>most studies on SMEs’ growth examine the growth factors one by one. (Wasilczuk, </p><p>2000) Nor is there any single theory that can adequately explain small business </p><p>growth due to the heterogeneity of SMEs. Moreover, growth itself is difficult to </p><p>measure, and can be measured either objectively or subjectively. (Delmar, 1996) </p><p>Therefore, this study incorporates the resource-based view, as well as the </p><p>consideration of SMEs’ fives stages model to examine the growth factor of SMEs. </p><p>The resource-based view provides a unified approach in the conceptualization of the </p><p>resource analysis in the small firm. The five stages model shows the position of SMEs </p><p>current growth stage. By analyzing SMEs’ key resources (tangible and intangible </p><p>resources), indentifying their growth stages, SMEs can find out the critical resources </p><p>which influence their business growth. </p><p>As a conclusion, the study finds that each resource has its importance in different </p><p>stages. Tangible resources, such as cash and physical resources are critical in the </p><p>start-up firms, while intangible resources are prioritized in the success and resource </p><p>maturity stages. In order to gain the competitive advantages, SMEs should fully </p><p>develop the unique and inimitable resources such as the brand, technology, culture </p><p>and reputations.</p>