AbstractThe aim of the thesis was to examine some older people's experiences of everyday life and how it is to grow old in Namibia today. Because everyday life is a broad concept, we chose to focus on some specific parts of everyday life. These are chores, family, work/education, elderly past and present and the government/society. Furthermore we chose to look at the similarities and differences between the experiences on the basis of gender, race/ethnic groups and class.We chose to use a qualitative research method and to be inspired by life stories. We used a semi-structured interview guide and interviewed six people between 70 and 89 years.

The purpose of the literature review was to examine barriers and facilitators to life style changes experienced by patients with coronary heart disease. This knowledge could be of use to the nurse in her role as a support to the patient in the process of life style change. The result from this study shows that family support, knowledege about the disease and motivation are important factors when changing life style behaviors..

The purpose of this study was to investigate how social workers who worked with financial assistance perceived their work situation and the impact work-related stress had on their health and quality of work. Further, the study intended to find out if they felt that they received support from their employer that could prevent stress-related sick leave. The following two research questions were to be answered: In what way does work-related stress affect social workers? health and job quality according to their own experience? What kind of support and help experienced social workers were available within their organization? To receive answers to the questions semi-structured interviews with five social workers were conducted, analyzed and interpreted. The results showed that when social workers have a heavy case burden, high stress and a risk of deteriorated job quality occurred.

The aim of the study was to distinguish if there was a difference between how work is perceived and how unemployed are viewed by people in collectivistic and individualistic cultures. A phenomenological approach was used in order to capture the participants life-worlds and their meaning constitution of a phenomenon, in this case the meaning of work and how unemployed are viewed. Subjects from different parts of the world, belonging to either a collectivistic or individualistic culture, participated in this study. Data was collected by self-reports which were analyzed by the method of MCA (Meaning Constitution Analysis) and the software Minerva. The results indicated that there were differences in how individuals from collectivistic cultures compared to individuals from individualistic cultures reflected about the meaning of work.

In this work, a method was developed and evaluated for calculating the life of welds under the influence of fatigue loads from a vibration environment. Typically, a shaker table is used for testing a component against vibration loads. The shaker table creates a vibration environment that is defined in the frequency domain by a power spectrum.Similarly, a virtual vibration table can be used to calculate the same type of load environment, which can then be used to calculate the expected lifetime. The benefit of this method is that it can be used in design, as well as in simulation of tests before physical verification tests are carried out.Today there are methods for calculating fatigue life of non-welded base material, but since many components contain welded joints, there is a need to apply this method to those types as well. To achieve this, the thesis combines two different areas, which together provide a method for fatigue assessment of welds using a virtual shaker table.The methodology is carried out by modeling the component, and its welded joints, in a finite element program.

The aim of this study was to increase the knowledge about if and how the National Value System?s goal of a life with dignity for the elderly pervades the work in home care organisations. The study was based on a qualitative research method and was conducted through interviews with professional care givers in home care organisations, there were five individual interviews and one pair interview. The background for this study was the National Value System for the eldercare that was introduced in 2011. The theory of New Public Management and the concept of Rationality of Caring were used to analyse the result.

One purpose of our study was to investigate if equality in work time and parental leave in a relationship affect the time that parents spend with their children. Our first hypothesis was that increased equality in work time and parental leave leads to a reduction of the parents? total time with their children, ie the children spend more hours in pre-school and begin pre-school earlier. In order to test our hypothesis, we investigated the relationship between the woman?s and the man?s work time and parental leave and the time that the children spend in pre-school as well as at what age they began pre-school by using two surveys.Our study showed a significant coherence between both working women?s work time and the children?s time in pre-school as well as women?s parental leave and the children?s age at start in pre-school.

?Crumbs make crust? is a collection of memories, told in words and pictures. It is a praise of the ordinary person and the essentials of everyday life.I have several years of experience from working with elderly people in social home care service. There I was given the opportunity to meet different personalities and take part in their stories and everyday life. I have followed this life and collected memories and in this project I have portrayed an older generation, now looked upon only as crumbs, yet crumbs that in many ways rested on and still rests on society today..

By comparing the experience off interaction in a life world with a drug habit and a life world without a drug habit you might find how they differ. We asked four former drug abusers in four semi structured interviews to describe their experiences off interaction under these two circumstances. The difference between the two life worlds when it comes to interaction is that in the drug abusing life world our informants describe that communicative action has to stand back for a more goal oriented action. In the drug free life world, communicative action on the other hand is experienced as the most important action. The difference is about wether interaction is goal oriented or oriented at understanding.

The study aimed to capture the institutionalized adolescent´s life stories and identified their thoughts and experiences of being institutionalized. This to understand and analyze the process that they go through to become adults with respect to three selected aspects: family relationships, school attendance and self-esteem. The adolescent´s in this study are or have been institutionalized by and according to Swedish law. It was based on 14 life stories and the purpose were to identify the adolescents thoughts and experience and which was later on used to understand and analyze the results with respect to the three selected aspects. Our analysis was based on two theories; symbolic interactionism and labeling theory.

This qualitative study investigated what factors influenced older adults to motivate themselves to continue to be pshysical active in their later life. Six individuals, both men and women in the ages of 65-89, were interviewed. The interviews were analysed by informal content analysis. The results showed that there is a certain group who had a strong will to lead a long, well-conditioned and sound life. Although, the seniors are getting older, they continue to make active choices about physical activity on a daily basis.

Every year an avorage of 40 000 Swedes fall ill with different forms of cancer. Chemotheraphy has an effect on the tumour cells as well as the healthy cells in the body, this causes many side effects which can be very problematic for the patient. The study was carried out in order to indicate the care measures that are taken to deal with the side effects i. e stomatit, loss of hair and sickness/vomiting, that are connected with chemotheraphy so that the outpatients will experience a quality of life. The method used was a qualitative interview with six nurses from the South if Sweden, all of whom are working with chemotheraphy patients.

While studying at the landscape architect program in Uppsala I found stress to play a major roll in the education. To help myself and others to handle the negative stress within the profession and the education I choose to write my thesis about landscape architects' work cultures. Swedish Association of Architects is in second place in the SACO study on long-term sickness for fatigue syndrome, stress and depression. The issue needed to be addressed. My purpose with the thesis has been to study the work cultures in the landscape profession and training and to study and find ways to manage negative stress in the profession and in education.

Background: During the last decade physical activity among Swedish adolescents has decreased. Changes regarding physical fitness can also be seen, for instance the cardio respiratory capacity has decreased mainly among young men while muscular capacity has decreased in both genders. Physical inactivity and impaired physical fitness are both important health related parameters. 18-year olds have fulfilled their physical development and are physically on top of their development, it makes this group interesting to examine. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate differences between physically active and inactive young men and women, concerning cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular fitness and balance.

Background: To suffer from diabetes type II affects peoples new situation of life and therefore even their experiences of quality of life. Aim: The aim with this study was to describe how people with diabetes's type II experiences their quality of life. Method: The method that was used was a literature study with describing and deductive approach, where people?s experiences have come forth on the basis of Rustoens (1993) definition of quality of life. In total we analyzed 16 scientific articles that were categorized in four themes through a systematic content analysis (Evans, 2003) which resulted in four themes and nine subthemes.