1.
Svanevie, Kajsa, 1976-
(författare)
Evidensbaserat socialt arbete : Från idé till praktik
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
As an innovation Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is designed as a tool for clinical problem solving. According to its theory of use EBP will bring a difference for policy makers, for professionals, for researchers and for service users. One question to be asked is whether EBP actually leads to the radical social change it is designed to accomplish. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the outcome of the effort to establish EBP, with a focus on the case of social work in Sweden. The research questions are: What is EBP? Why are efforts made to establish EBP? What is the outcome of the EBP project? How can the outcome of the EBP project be explained?The case study was conducted on a critical realistic meta-theoretical ground with a focus on explanation of social change with an explicit actor-structure perspective. Methodologically, a narrative synthesis of studies was made. As a complement primary data were collected to fill empirical gaps. The state of things was described before and after the EBP-initiatives. Several helping theories – Kuhn’s theory of paradigm, program theory, neo-institutional theory and theory of diffusion – were used to analyse the empirically mapped outcome of the EBP project.The results show that the import of the original model of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) to social work is a part of a wider social movement in the helping and educational professions. The new model has influenced social work as a discipline, as a field of practice and as a field of policy. There are examples of full-scale implementations of EBP, although EBP has not reached a general status as daily practice. Some obstacles remain.The gradual adaption of EBP corresponds to criteria hold by Kuhn for a paradigm shift. Acceptance of the model has contributed to change the structure and function of social systems. At an organizational level, this change means on-going institutionalization. The innovation is influencing the way institutional actors conduct their work. Although the structural conditions have been optimal, the EBP-model has been debated with heat. The EBP-debate and policy-driven infrastructural efforts have brought a more in-depth examination of the model. So-called coercive, normative, and regulative isomorphisms were used to change organizations. The degree of institutionalization depended on the individuals and the organizations willingness and preparedness to change, to understand, and to put the model into practice. When actors used a less strict version of the original EBP model, the pace of cultural and institutional change slowed down.
2.
Sjölund, Maria, 1978-
(författare)
Levd erfarenhet av ålder : Föreställningar om och erfarenheter av att vara och bli äldre
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Starting from the perspective that the ageing human body always is a situation and in a situation, the present thesis explores situations in which the meaning of age and ageing is negotiated. The analytical focus is on situations, and more specifically on experiences of age and ageing. The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse the lived experience of age and ageing. A hermeneutic understanding of experience and lived experience is fundamental to the thesis. Three studies are included.The first study is based on descriptions of situations in which older people felt “especially young” and "especially old". The analysis revealed that the same kinds of situations gave rise to experiences both of feeling “especially young” and of feeling “especially old”, but they differed in focus regarding social inclusion/exclusion.The second study is based on interviews with amateur dancers regarding their experiences of a dance project in which the artistic focus is on the aged body. Two themes emerged in the analysis: the dance project as a situation in which the meaning of age and ageing was both given new meanings and restated in stereotypical terms; and the aged and ageing person him-/herself as a situation for negotiating the meaning of age and ageing. The meaning of age was negotiated, as there were tensions between referring to age and ageing as resources and referring to them as a problem associated with restrictions. The situated experiences involved changes in the body, pointed out by other people or felt oneself. The dissociation from being old appeared as an internalized social norm, and one strategy for avoiding old age was to keep active, but not too active.The third study is based on a vignette dialogue with amateur dancers. Text excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir's book The Coming of Age (1970/1972) were used as vignettes to grasp notions about the aged in society as they appeared to the informants. Among the informants, notions of being and becoming old in a society are filled with fears of being dependent, becoming a social burden on society and being reduced to an aged person with standardized needs who is unable to live a worthy life. In sum, the lived experience of ageing is always situated as a complex interplay between the body, social norms, the available language and our notions about these phenomena. The present thesis shows that age and ageing can be filled with various inconsistent meanings that embrace social inclusion as well as social exclusion.
3.
Droppe, Adam, 1969-
(författare)
Konstitueringen av ett vetenskapligt objekt : Exemplet - det manliga klimakteriet
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
How are new scientific concepts of illnesses and disorder formed? The last fifty years have seen a dramatic increase in new diagnoses incorporated into medical manuals. The concept of the male menopause, or the andropause diagnosis, is suitable for studying how medical knowledge is produced, since it has alternated between being and not being part of the acknowledged medical knowledge since the beginning of the 19th century, when it was originally launched. After being rather unnoticed during the 20th century, the concept of the male menopause had a renaissance in the 1990s’. The andropause then became a specific research area, articles about the male menopause were widely published in medical journals, specific therapies were developed, and andropause clinics opened around the world. The thesis explores what combination of circumstances lay behind the establishment of the andropause as a scientific object in the 1990s’. The purpose was to find out what the institutionalization of the (concept of the) andropause shows about the production of science, specifically medical knowledge. Methodologically, the study can be described as an analysis of ideas, where the ideas contained in the concept of a male menopause are in focus. Accordingly, the research materials were scientific literature, media, and other documents where the idea of a male menopause was expressed. The analysis was structured in four divisions. First, the andropause theory was studied to find any obvious scientific explanations, such as new knowledge or discoveries. “Pure science” could not explain the breakthrough of the andropause diagnosis, since the andropause theory is laden with uncertainties according to the scientific principles of evaluation that the medical science itself supports. Second, the social organization of the medical knowledge production was inquired with focus on the medical profession, and the andropause theory was found to offer new professional arenas. Third, factors outside profession and science were found, the extra scientific dimensions, primarily cultural conditions and social structures. The emergence of feminist theory was found to change the perception of men in the culture, where the male norm no longer is self-evident. Fourth, in the social structure, pharmaceutical companies were found to engage strongly in the andropause concept. Together these factors constituted the andopause as a scientific object. The thesis demonstrates: the advantage of a multi perspective analysis: the complexity of the development of concepts of disease: the weakness of the epistemology of evidence-based medicine: and the social and cultural foundation of science.
4.
Fors, Filip, 1981-
(författare)
Lycklig? : Sju studier om välbefinnandets och livstillfredsställelsens bestämningsfaktorer
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Quality of life is often defined in terms of happiness. Happiness can be divided into two components; a cognitive and evaluating form of happiness named life satisfaction and a more emotional form of happiness named affective well-being. The aim of empirical happiness studies is to survey which factors that influence life satisfaction and affective well-being. Despite the fact that the purpose of happiness studies is to understand which factors that impact these two forms of happiness, previous studies have, however, almost exclusively been focused on factors that impact life satisfaction. Whether determinants of life satisfaction and affective well-being are different and if there are factors that are especially important for affective well-being is hence uncertain on the basis of previous research. The first and main question of the dissertation revolves around the attempt to answer these questions. More specifically, this thesis examine the relationship between the two forms of happiness and socioeconomic status, social relationships, health, recreational activities, personality traits and context of society of an individual. These questions are analyzed using statistical data from the European Social Survey and the Swedish SOM-survey.The results of this dissertation indicate that the relationship between different determinants and the two forms of happiness, systematically differ. First and foremost, many important aspects of socioeconomic status, social relationships and societal factors are shown to be more related to life satisfaction than affective well-being. Some aspects of health and personality, on the other hand, show a stronger relation with affective well-being compared to life satisfaction.Besides investigating whether the determinants of life satisfaction and affective well-being diverge, the aim of the dissertation is also to answer whether peoples personality traits and personal values, affect what significance life circumstances have for life satisfaction and affective well-being of the individual. The results of the dissertation indicate that both personality traits, as well as values, affect the significance of a number of different living conditions.In conclusion, the results of the dissertation indicate that the study of people’s happiness should be balanced by studying life satisfaction and affective well-being separately. Furthermore, the study of individual differences in personality traits and personal values can extend the understanding of how living conditions influence life satisfaction and affective well-being of individuals. This knowledge can, in turn, contribute to important awareness about how people’s life satisfaction and affective well-being can be promoted both on a personal as well as on a social level.
5.
Edvall Malm, Disa, 1965-
(författare)
Det socio-polisiära handlingsnätet : om kopplingar mellan polis och socialtjänst kring ungdomars kriminalitet och missbuk
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Övergripande diskuterar avhandlingen olika aspekter av att samhällets system av stöd och kontroll för barn och unga knyts närmare samman. Det handlar om hur samverkan framställs och uppfattas på olika nivåer och hur den konkretiseras i polisens och socialtjänstens arbete kring unga som utvecklat eller bedöms riskera att utveckla kriminalitet och/eller missbruk. Studieobjektet inbegriper övergripande ideologisknivå, lokal/praktisknivå och individuell nivå. Syftet med avhandlingen är att identifiera, beskriva och analysera polisens och socialtjänstens samverkan kring barn och ungas kriminalitet och missbruk. Utgångspunkten är hur; samverkan mellan myndigheterna framställs i offentliga dokument, hur lokala aktörer uppfattar behovet av men också möjligheter, svårigheter och hinder kring samverkan, hur myndigheterna lokalt är organiserade för att aktualisera, handlägga, behandla och avsluta barn och unga, och slutligen vilka barn och unga som denna samverkan kan omfatta. Avsikten är att få en bild av vad denna samverkan på policynivå innebär och sätta detta i relation till hur polis och socialtjänst förstår och skapar sina respektive och gemensamma uppdrag i förhållande till varandra lokalt. I avhandlingen används tre olika empiriska material och olika metoder för analys: Analys av statliga offentliga dokument, kvalitativa intervjuer med poliser, socialarbetare och deras chefer i en kommun och en kvantitativ kartläggning av aktuella ungdomar i kommunen. Handlingsnät som teoretisk grund används för att studera kopplingar mellan de båda myndigheterna och de tre olika nivåerna av studien. Genom att använda handlingsnät blir det möjligt att se hur polisens och socialtjänstens olika uppdrag kopplas samman kring barn och ungas kriminalitet och missbruk.Resultaten av studien visar att det pågår en ettablering av ett socio-polisiärt handlingsnät på den övergripande ideologiska nivån och den lokala kommunala nivån. I policydokumenten förspråkas ett kontrollerande förhållningsätt gentemot ungas kriminalitet. På den lokala nivån handlade det om ett kontrollstödjande förhållningsätt för att motverka både ungas kriminalitet och missbruk. Resultaten av studien visar att socialtjänsten fått ta ett större ansvar för att utreda och verkställa påföljder för ungas kriminella handlingar, samtidigt som det inom socialtjänsten riskerar att utvecklas en logik mera baserad på straffvärdet av den brottsliga handlingen än den unges individuella behov av hjälp och stöd. Studien visar att i polisens och sociatjänstens arbete med enskilda barn och unga finns få möjligheter till samarbete. Dessutom var det få unga personer som samtidigt var aktuella för både polis och socialtjänst, vilket gör det svårt att uppnå något djupare längre samarbete kring enskilda ungdomar under längre tid. Det kan i bästa fall mera handla om en form av remissförfarande från polis till socialtjänst.
6.
Lilliehorn, Sara, 1976-
(författare)
Betydelser av bröstcancer i ett livssammanhang
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse how a group of women experience that their every-day lives are affected during and after primary breast cancer treatment. The thesis is a consecutive, longitudinal study that takes an explorative qualitative approach. Seventy-one women younger than 60 years of age with primary breast cancer were consecutively included in the study. The women were interviewed four or five times over a period of 4 to 6 years from end of radiotherapy. The analyses of the interviews were inspired by grounded theory and narrative analysis. The thesis encompasses four papers. Paper I focused on the women’s contact with health care. The results of this study indicate that it is crucial for patients in a vulnerable situation to be admitted into a supportive system – ‘admitted into a helping plan’ – that, more or less explicitly, displays a well-thought-out plan of care. This is a process built on individual relationships with members of the health-care staff, but it ends up in a relationship to health care as a helping system, a ‘safe haven’ to attach to. Study II explored the women’s ideas about what motivated and discouraged their return to work. The results illustrate that the meaning of work fluctuates over time and that the processes of returning to work are conditioned by the patients’ individual life situations. Returning to work was regarded as an important part of the healing process because of how it generated and structured the women’s everyday lives. Returning to work meant demonstrating well-being and normalcy after breast cancer. Study III examined how life was lived and valued during and after treatment for breast cancer compared to pre-cancer life. The analysis showed that being afflicted with breast cancer was evaluated from a context of the women’s former everyday lives and stressed that how the women experienced breast cancer was a matter of personal circumstances. Study IV focused on how the women experienced and dealt with their altered bodies. The results showed that the women followed three different body-mind trajectories that depended to a significant extent on the severity of side effects and bodily alterations that resulted from their treatments.Being afflicted by breast cancer implies vulnerability and losses, but it can also involve benefits and provide new perspectives on life. How the overall breast cancer experience is valued seems to be very much a matter of circumstances in everyday life. This thesis highlights circumstances that focus in particular on contacts with health care, the body, the work situation, and the family situation.
7.
Linblad, Inger, 1963-
(författare)
Problembilder av barn : Representationer, föreställningar och strategier i BRIS stödtelefon 1996-98
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
A number of countries including Sweden have developed children’s helplines as free and anonymous counseling services for children and youth. The aim of this study was to deepen knowledge about how the problems of children and youth are represented and constructed in Sweden’s BRIS (Children’s Rights in Society) Children’s Helpline, telephone support between the years 1996 and 1998. The work was social constructivistic, examining how helpline responders understand and interpret information received during support calls. The concept of “the concern” is highlighted as a point of study of problem constructions within micro-counselling. The empirical material consisted primarily of interviews with persons who worked at BRIS either as employed ombudspersons or as volunteer telephone responders. Eleven ombudspersons replied to questions about the Children’s Helpline and how support services are organized. Thirty eight interviews were carried out with helpline responders at two separate occasions during the study period. Fifteen of these interviews provided material for an in depth investigation of responders preconceptions of children and youth’s everyday life, as well as the themes of gender, problematic relationships and assault as well as the strategies that responders used in their supportive calls. Statistical information was collected from BRIS reports. Fifteen completed questionnaires from support calls were included in this study. Analytical processes resulted in the development of the two theoretical concepts of familiarity and micro-understanding. General representations of children and youth situations are put forth via descriptions of misery. The responders’ concepts of children’s everyday life appear fragmentary because of the limited information available about the caller. Gender issues are constructed around questions of feminity and sexuality. The theme of assault contains calls from both girls and boys. Boys’ calls about assault are constructed around bullying and physical assault. Girls’ call are also constructed around violence but also include sexual abuse and molestation. This study contributes to the growing field of knowledge about the problem images of children and youth that emanate from support calls made to telephone helplines.
8.
Lundström, Ragnar, 1975-
(författare)
Den kalkylerande medborgaren : Bidragsfusk i svensk välfärdsdebatt 1990-2010
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation analyses discourse on benefit fraud in Sweden between 1990 and 2010. First, it maps general trends in public discourse about benefit fraud. This is done through a content analysis of news reporting about benefit fraud in four Swedish newspapers. This part of the dissertation shows that the number of published news articles about benefit fraud have increased significantly since 1990. Particularly large numbers of articles were published during the middle of the 1990s, and between 2002 and 2006. Second, a qualitative discourse analysis of talk about benefit fraud in news texts, political debates and government reports is conducted. During periods of intense news coverage about fraud, reporting is often clearly marked by traits generally associated with moral panics; constructing the phenomenon as seemingly more common than it in reality is, constructing cheaters as a threat to the moral fiber of society, and also claiming the need for counter-measures. The qualitative analysis furthermore focuses on how the relation-ships between different subject positions are constructed in the collected material. This part of the analysis shows that fraud discourse in Sweden during the past twenty years have shifted from a dominant focus on alleged cheating among immigrants in the early 1990s, to claims of abuse within the sickness insurance program after 2002. The analysis also shows that benefit fraud is constructed as a political problem using neoliberal discursive strategies that [1] reduce welfare policies to financial costs, [2] constitute benefit claimants as individually responsible for their inability to support themselves through regular work, and [3] articulate the welfare state as an instrument for the moral regulation of citizens.
9.
Lövgren, Veronica, 1963-
(författare)
Villkorat vuxenskap : Levd erfarenhet av intellektuellt funktionshinder, kön och ålder
2013
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse lived experience of social categorisations such as intellectual disability, gender and age. The following overarching questions will direct the focus of the thesis, on how 13 middle-aged (aged 38-60 years) women and men who receive disability services according to the Act (1993:387) concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS), describe their everyday life practices:- In what way(s) are the social categorisations disability, gender, and age expressed in the interviews? How do the participants relate their lived experience of the social categorisation in relation to arenas such as work, family, and leisure time? How can this lived experience be understood in relation to the structures and conditions that form the institutions within the disability services?With a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, the thesis is based on repeated audio- and video-recorded qualitative semi-structured interviews and field visits. The altogether 16 participants were divided into two groups: the main group consisted of 13 adults and a reference group, which consisted of 3 younger informants (aged 25-29 years).Despite political ambitions that state that people with disabilities should have opportunity to live like others, this thesis shows that their everyday life is, in fact, conditioned by institutional structures. The structures that conditions the disability services together with the social construction of disability, but also of age and gender, frames leisure time, social networks, family life, practicing partnership, mobility (especially for women), and working life – in short, these conditions their abilities to fulfil the expectations that are imbedded throughout the social construction of adulthood.The relationship with the labour force can be seen as an illustrative example: The ability to be part of a regular working force was central for the interviewees. However, the analysis showed that the work that was available for the participants, is a welfare state effort, that is situated in an intersection where a logic of care meets a logic derived from the open labour market, thereby creating a situation filled with contradictions. On the one hand, the informants felt an obligation to fulfil an almost Protestant work ethic. One the other hand, their work efforts are not acknowledged by society as work. On the one hand, daily activity is a voluntary right, on the other hand; the informants have little opportunity to relinquish this right, depending on the particular organisation of the disability services. The participants also expressed concerns about losing this work, a worry that can be seen as paradoxical in respect of their legislative right to daily activity. The analysis has highlighted how the participants, in many situations, suffer a disadvantageous position with regard to hermeneutical resources to make sense of their experience. They also face structural obstacles to fully live an adult life. This could be described as experiencing societal norms of what one is expected to live up to, but at the same time be deprived of real opportunities to fulfil these requests – thereby, to live a contradiction. Lived experience of intellectual disability, gender and age, can therefore be considered as being a lived experience of a conditional adulthood.
10.
Perlinski, Marek, 1955-
(författare)
Skilda världar : specialisering eller integration i socialtjänstens individ- och familjeomsorg
2010
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The general objective of this dissertation is to describe and analyse how specialised respective integrated forms of organisation in the Swedish Personal Social Services (PSS) condition social workers’ interventions and client effects (outcomes). The three specific questions are: 1) How are structural conditions for social work with clients created in specialised versus integrated (generic) forms of organising PSS? 2) How do social workers carry out their work with clients in specialised versus integrated (generic) PSS-organisations? 3) How do different organisational models of PSS influence the results for clients? The research was conducted in three Swedish municipalities with different organisational models within the personal social services: 1) specialised organisation, 2) integrated organisation, and 3) a “combined” organisation with a mix between integration and specialisation. The research had a complex design. It was carried on as comparative case study. Data was collected in several different ways: 1) by means of survey among social workers, 2) by interviewing politicians, mangers and social workers, 3) focus groups consisting of social workers, 4) by collecting official documents, guidelines etc. 5) by mapping of the organisation of social services in the municipalities by means of analyse of their homepages and additional interviews by telephone. The data were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The main results in this dissertation are: 1) In the majority of Swedish municipalities the PSS are nowadays specialized. 2) The formal organizational structure of PSS is always challenged by the employees’ spontaneous organising process that goes in an opposite direction. 3) Only the integrated (generic) organisation emphasizes social workers professional competence and knowledge. 4) Social workers, as a professional group, have the collective power to (to a certain degree) influence political decisions on what kind of PSS organisation is chosen in their municipality. 5) Regardless of organisation model, social workers’ method use is more unspecific than specific. 6) Social workers, in general, place significantly more weight on working with clients’ relationships and aspects of trust than on (specific or unspecific) working methods. 7) A holistic (generic) view of a client can only exist in a direct relationship between social worker and the individual and a unique client. It seems difficult to build in holism into primarily specialised organisations. 8) One may question whether a specialised organisation leads to specialisation of its employees in a way that they become experts on specific problems. The three organisational models are not equally good. Neither the specialised organisation nor the combined organisation is able to create economic or organisational conditions for working with clients that are clearly experienced as good. This also holds true for assessment of need, possibilities to make relevant interventions, such as building relationships. Those two organisations show several deficits regarding work with clients.
