| 1. |
- Hansson, Jonas, 1971-
(författare)
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Mind the blues : Swedish police officers' mental health and forced deportation of unaccompanied refugee children
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Introduction: Policing is a public health issue. The police often encounter vulnerable populations. Police officers have wide discretionary powers, which could impact on how they support vulnerable populations. In encountering vulnerable populations the police officers are required to be professional; maintaining mental health in the face of challenges is part of professionalism. Their encounters with vulnerable populations might influence their mental health which in turn might influence the way they use their discretion when making decisions.Background/context: Sweden receives more unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children than any other country in Europe. The number of asylum applications for such children increased from 400 in 2004 to 7000 in 2014 to over 35,000 in 2015. These children come to Sweden and apply for asylum without being under the care of their parents or other legal guardian. Some are denied asylum. If they do not return to their country of origin voluntarily the police are responsible for their deportation. The Swedish government wants an increasing number of deportations and wants them carried out with dignity. This thesis is about the police officers’ perceptions of how to interpret the seemingly contradictory demands for more deportations, that is, efficiency; and concerns for human rights during the deportation process, that is, dignity. This is conceptualized using three theoretical frameworks: a) street-level bureaucracy, b) job demand-control-social support model and c) coping. These theoretical frameworks indicate the complexity of the issue and function as constructions by means of which understanding can be brought to the police officers’ perceptions of deportation work involving unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children and how such work is associated to their mental health.Aim: The current research aims to investigate and analyse Swedish police officers’ mental health in the context of deportations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children.Methods: This thesis uses both qualitative and quantitative methodology. The qualitative approach comprised interviews conducted to achieve a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of police officers’ perceptions of deportations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children. The quantitative method involved the use of validated questionnaires to investigate the association between police officers’ mental health and psychosocial job characteristics and coping. This approach made it possible to study a complex issue in a complex environment and to present relevant recommendations. A total of 14 border police officers were interviewed and 714 police officers responded to a survey.Results: The police officers utilize their wide discretionary powers and perceive that they are doing what is best in the situation, trying to listen to the child and to be aware of the child’s needs. Police officers with experience of deportations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children were not found to have poorer mental health than police officers with no such experience. Furthermore, high job demand, low decision latitude, low levels of work-related social support, shift work and being single are associated with poor mental health. Coping moderates the association between mental health and the experience of carrying out deportations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking, refugee children, and the police officers seem to utilize both emotional and problem-solving coping during the same complex deportation process.Implications / conclusions: The general conclusion reached in this thesis is that if police officers are subject to reasonable demands, have high decision latitude, access to work-related social support, and utilize adaptable coping, the deportation work does not seem to affect their mental health. When police officers meet vulnerable people, they utilize their discretionary powers to deal with seemingly contradictory demands, that is, efficiency and dignity. The executive role in the deportations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children and the awareness of dealing with a child threatened with deportation might give rise to activation of a sense of protection, safety and security. Discretion might make it possible to act on this sense of protection, safety and security and to combine efficiency and dignity. Further studies, which integrate cognitive and emotional discretion with coping, need to be undertaken.
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| 2. |
- Jeon, Jin Yong, et al.
(författare)
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A cross-national comparison in assessment of urban park soundscapes in France, Korea, and Sweden through laboratory experiments
- 2018
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Ingår i: Applied Acoustics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0003-682X .- 1872-910X. ; 133, s. 107-117
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study aims at examining the effect of socio-cultural context, including language, on soundscape assessments in urban parks. In total, 95 persons took part in three laboratory experiments, conducted in France (30 participants), Korea (30 participants) and Sweden (35 participants). Twenty-eight audio-visual excerpts from recordings conducted in five urban parks were used as stimuli. The participants evaluated soundscape quality using attribute scales provided in their own native languages. Principal Components Analysis produced two principal components of perceived affective quality, Pleasantness and Eventfulness. There were high levels of similarity in attributes associated with the Pleasantness among the three countries, whereas some differences were observed in the attributes related to Eventfulness. Two hierarchical cluster analyses were conducted based on perceived dominance of sound sources, and component scores of perceived affective quality. There were no significant differences in clustering results based on perceived dominance of sound sources among the different nationalities. In contrast, discrepancies were found in the clustering results based on perceived affective quality. In particular, perceptual responses to human sounds, birdsong, and water sounds, which are closely related to Eventfulness, were significantly different across the three cultural backgrounds. These findings provide empirical evidence of socio-cultural differences in soundscape assessment.
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| 3. |
- Lundén, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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On urban soundscape mapping : A computer can predict the outcome of soundscape assessments
- 2016
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the INTER-NOISE 2016 - 45th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. - 9783939296119 ; , s. 4725-4732
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not a computer may predict the outcome of soundscape assessments, based on acoustic data only. It may be argued that this is impossible, because a computer lack life experience. Moreover, if the computer was able to make an accurate prediction, we also wanted to know what information it needed to make this prediction. We recruited 33 students (18 female; Mage = 25.4 yrs., SDage = 3.6) out of which 30 assessed how pleasant and eventful 102 unique soundscape excerpts (30 s) from Stockholm were. Based on the Bag of Frames approach, a Support Vector Regression learning algorithm was used to identify relationships between various acoustic features of the acoustics signals and perceived affective quality. We found that the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients provided strong predictions for both Pleasantness (R2 = 0.74) and Eventfulness (R2 = 0.83). This model performed better than the average individual in the experiment in terms of internal consistency of individual assessments. Taken together, the results show that a computer can predict the outcome of soundscape assessments, which is promising for future soundscape mapping.
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