Social support has been recognized to impact positive health behaviours, including exercise participation. In the exercise domain, one conceptual framework that has been employed to examine social support is Weisss (1974) Model of Social Provisions. The main purpose of the present study was to utilize Weisss (1974) model to examine how the social provisions relate to university students energy expenditure while exercising with others. Specifically, this study was concerned with participants perceptions about the availability of social provisions, their preferences for the provisions in the exercise setting, and the congruence between social provision perceptions and preferences as they related to energy expenditure. Participants who had performed exercise with others in the past 4 weeks (N=201) completed the Modifiable Activity Questionnaire (MAQ; Kriska et al., 1990) to assess energy expenditure, as well as modified versions of the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona & Russell, 1987) to assess social provision perceptions and preferences. Results from exploratory factor analyses revealed separate five-factor models for both the perceived provisions (i.e., attachment, reliable alliance, social integration, opportunity for nurturance, and reassurance of worth) and the preferred provisions (i.e., guidance, social integration, reliable alliance, reassurance of worth, and opportunity for nurturance). Discriminant function analyses were used to assess the unique contribution of these perceived and preferred provisions to participants energy expenditure. The results from the analyses indicated that none of the perceived provisions and none of the preferred provisions predicted high versus low expenditure, nor did the congruence relationship between the perceived and preferred variants of each provision predict high versus low energy expenditure. Potential explanations for the non-significant findings were highlighted with respect to study methodology. Directions for future research were also discussed.

The death of a spouse is one of the most profound and life-altering events adults will ever experience. While the experience of spousal bereavement is traumatic at any time, there is evidence to support the fact that young women who are widowed experience unique challenges. The purpose of studying young widows was to understand the meaning of spousal bereavement for individual participants. The research tradition of phenomenology was chosen to inform the study, and the guiding question became what is the lived experience of spousal bereavement for young women? The study participants were five women who were under the age of 45 at the time of their husbands death. The experiences of these young widows were illuminated through stories and reflections on the journey of a young widow. Five themes emerged from their experiences. Young widows grieve both the loss of a companion and the death of their dreams. Accompanying these losses can be the challenges of single parenthood, the need for career, financial and lifestyle changes, and the readjustment to life as a single adult. Increased understanding from the perspective of the bereaved widow, along with strategies and interventions for nurses working with this group of women, will provide nurses and health care professionals with skills to better assist this client population.

After the October Revolution of 1917, one of the primary aims of the Bolshevik Party was the creation of the New Soviet Man and Woman. In the view of the Party, young people, who were presumably more malleable and less influenced by the countrys tsarist past, were the most logical group to become this new Soviet person. This thesis examines the relationship between the Bolshevik Party and young people in the 1920s. It discusses the methods the Party took to influence young people, including the restructuring of the countrys school system, the creation of a national youth organization, the Communist League of Youth (Komsomol), and the development of recreational and leisure activities intended to teach youth the values and behaviours appropriate to Communists. It also examines the experiences of youth under the regime, with attention paid to the different experiences had by urban youth as opposed to rural youth, and young men as distinct from young women. Finally, the thesis attempts to assess the degree to which the Bolshevik Party was successful in creating believers among young people.

In this paper a news site’s potential of meeting conflicting needs is considered. Snacking - hencereading news in a quick selective style - is one trend among young readers which seems to be inconflict with assessing the credibility of news, which in turn depends on receiving multipleperspectives or viewpoints among the issues read. As young audiences neither want to beforced to put more effort into news reading, nor want to receive news in a single-layered way,satisfaction with the news is hampered. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate acurrent news site’s potential in complying with both needs: snacking on the one hand andreceiving multiple perspectives on the other. As research case, the German public service newssite tagesschau.de is investigated in two methodological approaches. In a content analysis thepotential of the news site is assessed by analyzing ways of presenting perspectives in snacknews element. In a reception study this potential is reassessed by a young audience sample. Itwas found that perspectives indeed are presented in snack news elements in direct or indirectforms, often represented by different sources than the journalist’s. However, it shows that thesepresentations of perspectives not always reach the audience. Members of the audience leaveout many elements that could be snacked on, and stick to headlines for the main part. Thisimplies that they miss multiple perspectives offered in elements suitable for snacking, such ashyperlinks. In order to offer multiple perspectives to snacking news readers, more controversyshould be indicated in headlines, comparisons of perspectives should be made easier and linksshould be more relevant by leaving out aspects perceived as unnecessary and by representingsources in a better balance.

Abstract As a young offender in Sweden today you can be sentenced to juvenile care within the social services. Within the juvenile care it may be an option for these young offenders to undergo an affect program. That is a collective name for several types of structured programs that can include everything from conversations to visits. The purpose of this study was to create an understanding of which arguments there are for why these affect programs for young offenders is being used in three municipalities in southern Sweden. We authors found this interesting because of the lack of evidence for these affect programs. We do not know how effective these programs are for the young people that are undergoing them. We have interviewed employees at three different affect programs and the research questions that we have answered are: What arguments, for using these affect programs, do the concerned operators have? What do the concerned operators think about the lack of evidence for the affect programs? To achieve the aim of this study, we have implemented a qualitative study of semi-structured interviews. The analysis of our collected empirical work was based on the term isomorphism. The results of the study show that the reasons why the employees at the three studied affect programs chose to start these affect programs was because they had the requirement to be able to offer a legible, predictable and proportionate penalty. In the absence of evidence about how programs should be built the employees were inspired by other municipalities. The employees do not put much emphasis on different theories but instead they rely on their own experiences and on what they think is effective. The employees at the three programs think that it would be good if it existed evidence about the affect programs, but it is not crucial. Local resources set limits for how good the affect programs can become and the staff involvement also has a great significance.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka unga idrottares upplevelser i en topprestation. Studiens frågeställningar var: ·        Vilka upplevelser har unga idrottare i en topprestation? ·        Upplever unga idrottare flow i en topprestation? ·        Vilka faktorer ligger bakom en topprestation hos unga idrottare?  Utifrån syfte och frågeställningar valdes mätinstrumentet Flow State Scale-2 (FSS-2). FSS-2 består av ett påståendeformulär som mäter den totala upplevelsen av flow samt var och en av de nio dimensionerna av flow. Kontakt togs via telefon och mail med ansvariga tränare vid idrottsgymnasier för att finna unga idrottare med ett tydligt minne av en topprestation. Undersökningsgruppen blev 51 stycken unga idrottare, män och kvinnor i åldrarna16-20 år som utövat fotboll, ishockey eller orientering på elitnivå. Litteratursökning gjordes i bibliotekskatalogen tillhörande Umeå Universitet. Den funna relevanta litteraturen och artiklarna har legat till grund för denna studies bakgrundsdel.  Påståendeformuläret FSS-2 visar att undersökningspersonerna, i sin topprestation, hade en stark upplevelse av inre tillfredsställelse, tydliga mål, koncentration på uppgiften, känsla av kontroll och balans mellan skicklighet och utmaning. Vidare upplevde de att handlingar och tankar kunde utföras automatiskt, tydlig återkoppling av resultatet i prestationen och avsaknad av osäkerhet. Undersökningsgruppen upplevde en viss förändrad tidsuppfattning i sin topprestation. Resultatet av studien visar att undersökningspersonerna upplevde en hög grad av flow i sina topprestationer. Bakomliggande faktorer till de unga idrottarnas topprestationer är kroppsliga dimensioner, fysiologiska faktorer, motoriska faktorer, psykologiska faktorer och sociologiska faktorer.  En slutsats av denna studie är att oavsett kön eller typ av idrott framkommer följande karaktäristiska faktorer när de upplevt en topprestation; trygg, säker, automatiserad, fokuserad och en känsla av kontroll. Dessa faktorer sammantaget tycks skapa en tydlig upplevelse av tillfredsställelse och glädje.

Title: Facebook girls, a qualitative study of social medias and Facebooks impact on young girlsNumber of pages: 32Author: Mirja LarssonTutor: Amelie HössjerCourse: Media and Communication studies CPeriod: Autumn 2010University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information and Media,Uppsala UniversityPurpose/aim: To discover any possible difference between young girls and older girls in their wayof using Facebook.Material/method: Personal interviews, literature, electronic sources, Internet sources.Main results: The younger girls are not as aware as the older girls of their exposure on Facebookand the possible down-sides of their frequent Facebook-usage. Young girls in general use Facebookas a source to form their identity.Keywords: Facebook, identity, young girls, Cooley, Elza Dunkels, Altman and Taylor

This study aimed to explore perceptions and experiences concerning sexuality, contraceptives, unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion among young people in Kisumu, Kenya. The design of the study was inductive with a qualitative approach using personal in-depth interviews. Eight participants (four female and four male) were asked to describe their perceptions and experience concerning sexuality, contraceptives, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortion. The result showed that culture and norms, misconceptions and gender based power in sexuality are factors that impact Sexual Reproductive Health among young people in Kisumu today. Unwanted pregnancy was described as a shame, a burden and a destroyed life which lead to many unsafely induced abortions. The findings indicate that youth interventions are important, such as engaging young men in unwanted pregnancy and thus unsafe abortions and to empower young women.

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of the Texas Drug and Alcohol Driving Awareness Program (TDADAP) in relation to alcohol-related offenses among young drivers. Participants in this study were students in pre-license programs for young beginning drivers who either received or did not receive TDADAP instruction as part of their curriculum. Based on the examination and statistical analysis of Texas Department of Public Safety driving record data, findings indicate that TDADAP participation did positively influence subsequent alcohol-related traffic convictions. Participants that received TDADAP instruction had a total of 5601 records, 231 of which were alcohol-related convictions. Participants who did not receive TDADAP instruction had a total 5945 records with 376 alcohol-related convictions. Promising results came from findings associated with TDADAP participation and the total number of alcohol-related offenses attributed to a group, the number of ALR offenses, MIP offenses, PI offenses and DUI/DWI offenses attributed to a group. When adjusted for group size, participants who did not receive TDADAP instruction had 53% more convictions than the TDADAP participants. With regard to alcohol-related accidents, findings were mixed in that the test group had a higher-than-expected number of participants with at least one accident, while the control group frequency was less than expected. The reverse was found when considering participants with two alcohol-related accidents. When taken as a whole, results from this study indicate that while TDADAP participation may influence alcohol-related traffic convictions and some alcohol-related accidents, it is a more accurate predictor of alcohol-related traffic convictions and a less accurate predictor of all alcohol-related accidents.

This dissertation offers the term “narrative intimacy” to refer to an implicit relationship between narrator and reader that depends upon disclosure and trust. By examining contemporary American fiction for adolescent women by critically- and commercially-successful authors such as Sarah Dessen, Stephenie Meyer, and Laurie Halse Anderson, I explore the use of narrative intimacy as a means of reflecting and reinforcing larger, often contradictory, cultural expectations regarding adolescent women, interpersonal relationships, and intimacy. Specifically, I investigate the possibility that adolescent women narrators construct understandings of the adolescent woman reader as a friend, partner in desire, or “bibliotherapist,” which in turn allow the narrator to understand the reader as a safe and appropriate location for disclosure. At the same time, the novels I discuss offer frequent warnings against the sort of unfettered disclosure the narrators perform in their relationships with the reader: friendships are marked as potential sites of betrayal and rejection, while romantic relationships are presented as inherently threatening to physical and emotional health. In order to interrogate the construction of narrative intimacy, I rely upon a tradition of narrative and reception theory concerning the roles of narrator and reader. I also turn to other cultural representations of adolescent women and their relationships, from films, television, and magazines to the self-help and nonfiction literature that provides insight into current psychological, sociological, and anthropological understandings of adolescent womanhood. Ultimately, I argue, the prevalence of narrative intimacy in fiction for adolescent women reflects a complex system that encourages adolescent women to seek intimate interpersonal relationships even as it discourages the type and degree of disclosure that is ostensibly required in the development of intimacy. The narrator thus turns to the reader because the “logical gap”—to borrow a term from Peter Lamarque—between fiction and reality allows for a construction of the reader as a recipient of disclosure who cannot respond with the threats of criticism, judgment, or rejection that may be presented by other characters within the text. The reader, in turn, may come to depend upon narrative intimacy as a space through which to vicariously explore her own understanding of intimacy.