Background: Interest in resilience has rapidly increased over recent years because of its potential impact on health, well-being and quality of life. However, despite the increasing prevalence of dementia, there is a lack of resilience research involving people diagnosed with this condition. Therefore, little is known about what it is that enables people to live well with dementia and continue to lead successful and meaningful lives. Even small delays in the onset and progression of dementia have the potential to significantly reduce its global burden. More specifically, studies have shown an association between social engagement and reduced risk of cognitive decline and incident dementia and consequently there is growing interest in the effect of increasing social interaction on cognition. Objectives: This thesis comprises two parts. Initially, a systematic literature review summarises and evaluates the current empirical evidence to establish whether interventions which aim to increase social interaction can improve cognition in older adults. Secondly, a qualitative study aims to develop a grounded theory of the concept of resilience in people diagnosed with mild to moderate dementia. Methods: For the systematic review, a comprehensive list of electronic databases was systematically searched, relevant authors in the field were contacted and a hand search of relevant journals was conducted. For the qualitative study, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with people diagnosed with dementia, with a social constructivist version of grounded theory informing the collection and analysis of data. Results: 17 studies met eligibility criteria for the systematic review, mostly of moderate quality. Study heterogeneity and methodological variability made it difficult to determine the specific contribution of social interaction to cognitive improvements. There was, however, tentative support for improvement in semantic fluency. The results of the qualitative study propose a model which hypothesises resilience is a process of ‘overcoming dementia’. For participants this meant maintaining a sense of pre- and post-diagnostic continuity which was achieved through a complex interaction of their approach to life and acceptance of dementia in conjunction with spousal and other social support. Conclusions: Although the systematic review found some evidence increased social interaction can improve cognition in older adults, this finding is tentative and should be interpreted with caution, with further research warranted. The qualitative study proposes a model of resilience which explains the process of ‘overcoming dementia’. Resilience is conceptualised as comprising individual, social, community, societal and cultural aspects and opens up the possibility of promoting resilience in people with dementia through the development of psychosocial interventions. This study emphasises the strengths and abilities of people with dementia, as well as the importance of social support, but most importantly it is from the perspective of the person with dementia.

Tese de Mestrado. Engenharia de Serviços e Gestão. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2011

Despite the introduction of road safety measures and media campaigns, crashes are a leading cause of death in Western Australia. While economic costs of crashes are relatively easy to determine, their psychosocial burden remains appreciably under-studied, as are the social, cultural, historical, temporal, and political contexts within which grief experiences are housed. As such, I explored the experience of grief resulting from losing a loved one in a crash in Western Australia and described the influence of contextual factors on those grief experiences.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Introduction The aim of this study was to examine how the term “evidence” was conceived and used among academics and practitioners who teach medicine and public health. The rationale for the study was the widespread debate in the 1990s about evidence in health care. Methods Qualitative data were collected between 1996 to 1999. The core data came from unstructured interviews with researchers and practitioners linked to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney. Other sources of data were: participant observation of group interactions in the Faculty of Medicine and at national and international conferences about evidence in health care; discourse in health care literature; and Internet posting to an international “evidence-based health” Email discussion list. The Grounded Theory method was adopted to analyse and interpret these data. The process involved systematic coding of the data to develop conceptual categories. These categories were employed to formulate propositions about the topic of evidence and how it was conceived and used by the study participants. Results Researchers and practitioners often discussed evidence from a “realist” view: that is they valued scientifically derived and rigorously substantiated knowledge about the natural world. Yet despite their widely shared epistemological perspectives, study participants presented several diverse concepts of evidence. Their ideas were also dynamic and evolving, and often influenced by the developing (local and international) debates and controversies about evidence-based medicine (EBM). Grounded Theory analysis leads to the selection of a core “social process”. This is a core conceptual category that draws together the ideas observed in the data, and that is adopted to present the study findings. In this study, “judgement” was identified as the core social process to underpin all examined reflections and discussions about evidence. Study participants defined the concept of evidence through a combination of description and appraisal. Evidence was described in three ways, i.e.: as a “measure of reality”, by its “functional role”, or as a “constructed product”. Evidence was also appraised on three “dimensions”, i.e.: “benchmarked”, “applied” and “social” dimensions of evidence. Participants invoked these concepts of evidence differently when forming their own judgements about medical or public health knowledge; when making decisions about clinical practice; and when using argument and persuasion to influence the judgements of others. Many researchers and practitioners also modified their judgements on evidence in the light of EBM. This was based on perceptions that EBM had become a dominant rhetoric within health care, which had the potential to channel the flow of resources. This led to an increasing consideration of the “social dimension” of evidence, and of the social construction and possible “misuse” of the term evidence. Conclusions The concept of evidence is presented in this study as a multi-dimensional construct. I have proposed that the three descriptions and three dimensions of evidence presented in this study, and recognition of the way these may be invoked when forming and influencing judgments, can be used as a basis for communicating about evidence in medicine and public health among colleagues and with students. There are significant gaps in knowledge (based on empirical research) about the social dimension of evidence. Particularly, in situations where researchers and practitioners wish to employ the concept of evidence to influence others’ medical and public health practice and wider social policy.

This study sought to investigate the way in which young children respond to and make aesthetic judgements about art works made by their peers. Grounded Theory was deemed to be an appropriate research methodology enabling a scrutiny of serendipitous experiences as well as structured investigation generated from those experiences. A total of 296 seven-year-old children were interviewed in small groups of three or four and asked to respond to visual art materials. These subjects were drawn from schools in the states of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Results indicated that two factors associated with the appraisal of art works seemed to exist: a function of making aesthetic judgements and a function of gathering and interpreting information about the art works. The study found that children utilized a three-phase process in making aesthetic judgements. The first phase seemed to be pre-figured; the second and third phase seemed to occur as a outcome of prompting. This three-phase process was designated as an Aesthetic Response Model.

'Being There' is about developing appropriate design processes which have the opportunity to give local communities a voice through the language of landscape. My Research aimed to learn from Australia's Indigenous conscience to attain more culturally, ecologically and socially accurate modes of engagement with the landscape throughout design practice. Stretching between Coober Pedy and Tweed Heads 'Being There' has become an exploration into the Landscape Architectural practice of engaging intimately with site and community through grounded techniques. In addition, the work aspires to engage with the idea of evolutionary design processes, which envisage landscape projects as points of open-ended interaction with site and place. 'Being there' is not only about spending time in one place, but also the techniques that these opportunities have given me such as documenting information gleaned through the eyes of local experts. As a practitioner, I can not do this without appropriately engaging in the richness and complexity of place defined and revealed through the challenge of communication. In this mode of design the processes of analysis and consultation act as lenses in curating the existing condition, defining its successes and failures in the cultural terms of people and place. Here, in contrast to my former practice, the intent is that design recovers landscape, rather than recreating it.

<p>Syftet med den här studien har varit att undersöka hur homosexuella män upplever våld och risken att bli utsatt för våld bara på grund av att de är homosexuella. Den metod som användes för att utföra studien var Grundad teori. Detta för att på ett öppet sätt närma sig problemområdet utan föreställningar med syftet att skapa en ny teori. En bidragande orsak till teorivalet, då Grundad teoris huvudsyfte är att skapa nya teorier, var att forskning om homosexuellas utsatthet ofta beskrivs ur en heterosexuell synvinkel och handlar om vad de utsatts för och inte hur det upplevs. I resultatet framkom en komplex bild som å ena sidan visar att intervjupersonerna anpassar sig i vissa situationer på grund av risken att bli utsatt för våld, men å andra sidan anser de inte att våldet begränsar deras sätt att leva. Våldets närvaro leder till att personerna ifrågasätter och tvivlar på sig själva men har även lett till att personerna härdats och står för vilka de är. I sällskap med andra HBT-personer känner de sig helt trygga och där existerar inget våld alls, det är utanför den ”bubblan” som våldet finns och påverkar dem.</p>

Smoking in youth continues to be an important public health issue. Because adolescence is the key period for smoking initiation, prevention efforts need to take place before the adolescent years. Little is known about parental smoking prevention interventions. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to understand parental approach to the topic of smoking with school-age pre-adolescent children within the context of local policies and programs concerning smoking. The study was carried out using the grounded theory method of Strauss and Corbin (1998). The sample was purposive and consisted of 38 parents who had at least one child ranging in age from 5 to 12 years and 9 professionals whose work involved youths or smoking prevention. Data consisted of interviews with the parents and professionals and information obtained about smoking-specific public policies and programs that were relevant locally. The data from the parents were analyzed to construct a theory and from the professionals to generate themes. The findings represent a substantive theory that explains how parents communicated with their children about smoking. Parents perceived smoking to be a latent danger for their children. That meaning was shaped by their knowledge of the health effects of smoking and their knowledge of the nature of youth smoking. They did not want their children to smoke and to deter it they communicated with them by taking action in the form of having a no-smoking rule and verbally interacting on the topic. Their verbal interaction consisted of discussing smoking with their children by intentionally taking advantage of opportunities, telling their children about the health effects of smoking and their opposition to it by responding on the spur-of-the-moment if their attention was drawn to the issue by external cues, or acknowledging to their children the negative effects of smoking by responding only when their children brought it up. Their action and verbal interaction produced outcomes for them in the form of feelings and thoughts. The study has implications for further theory development and research. The understanding gained from the theory may be used in practice to guide interventions with parents about child smoking prevention.

The present study explored the stigmatization experiences of dirty workers in one dirty work job-female exotic dancers-in an effort to understand the components of dirty work stigma. The framework presented here is based on the integration of existing theory regarding the components of stigma and dirty work. Grounded theory was used to guide the collection and analysis of interviews from 18 participants. Five dirty work stigma components were identified in the participant accounts (i.e., awareness of negative perceptions, type of stigma, visibility, controllability, and type of taint). These components were centrally organized around the moral taint of the dirty work job of exotic dancing.

Syftet med den här studien har varit att undersöka hur homosexuella män upplever våld och risken att bli utsatt för våld bara på grund av att de är homosexuella. Den metod som användes för att utföra studien var Grundad teori. Detta för att på ett öppet sätt närma sig problemområdet utan föreställningar med syftet att skapa en ny teori. En bidragande orsak till teorivalet, då Grundad teoris huvudsyfte är att skapa nya teorier, var att forskning om homosexuellas utsatthet ofta beskrivs ur en heterosexuell synvinkel och handlar om vad de utsatts för och inte hur det upplevs. I resultatet framkom en komplex bild som å ena sidan visar att intervjupersonerna anpassar sig i vissa situationer på grund av risken att bli utsatt för våld, men å andra sidan anser de inte att våldet begränsar deras sätt att leva. Våldets närvaro leder till att personerna ifrågasätter och tvivlar på sig själva men har även lett till att personerna härdats och står för vilka de är. I sällskap med andra HBT-personer känner de sig helt trygga och där existerar inget våld alls, det är utanför den ”bubblan” som våldet finns och påverkar dem.