Sense of Coherence : Determinants and consequences

ABSTRACT Sense of coherence (SOC) is a core concept within Antonovsky s salutogenic theory and is argued to be a psychological determinant of health. The present social-epidemiological study explores the associations between a wide range of generalized resistance resources of SOC among Finnish- and Swedish-speaking women and men with a view to gaining deeper insight into its developmental circumstances and determinants. Secondly, a five-year follow-up study was conducted in order to assess the stability of SOC in difficult life events. Finally the role and effect of SOC in the intentions to retire early was investigated in a prospective study. The above studies were based on two data sets: the Finnish 'Survey on Living Conditions' (ELO-94) conducted in 1994 by means of personal face-to-face interviews (N=6506), and a prospective postal survey of the 15-year Health and Social Support (HeSSup) study for which the baseline data was collected in 1998 (N=25 898) and the follow-up in 2003. The present study reveals that the level of SOC in adulthood is strongly dependent on close and successful social relationships during both childhood and adulthood, and that there is a strong association with qualitative work features. Not having a partner as well as being unable to use one s skills at work proved to threaten men s SOC in particular, whereas a lack of social support did the same for women. Otherwise, the association with generalized resistance resources turned out to be quite similar in both genders. Swedish-speaking Finns appear to have a slightly stronger SOC due to the better psycho-emotional circumstances in the childhood home and work circumstances in adulthood, in other words higher levels of generalized resistance resources compared to Finnish speakers. These language group differences did not concern any social-life factors included in the present study. The results of the five-year follow-up study suggest that SOC is not stable, and that the level clearly decreases after a negative life event. Even a strong SOC decreased during the follow-up period and, furthermore, was no more stable than a mediocre or weak SOC. There seems to be a clear and independent association with the intentions to retire early among both men and women following full adjustment. Swedish speakers appear to be less inclined to retire early than Finnish speakers. In the light of the present study, it seems that SOC is determined not only by socio-economic factors but also by close and successful social relationships during both childhood and adulthood. This applied to both genders and language groups. Interventions aimed at promoting the health of the disadvantaged should therefore focus on families with children, and extend later also to other than socio-economic spheres of life. SOC theory could also be applied in efforts to inhibit early retirement: management practices aimed at providing employees with a work environment and tasks that are comprehensible, manageable and meaningful could potentially decrease the intentions to retire early.

Fuzzy Coherence: Making Sense of Continuity in Hypertext Narratives

Hypertexts are digital texts characterized by interactive hyperlinking and a fragmented textual organization. Increasingly prominent since the early 1990s, hypertexts have become a common text type both on the Internet and in a variety of other digital contexts. Although studied widely in disciplines like hypertext theory and media studies, formal linguistic approaches to hypertext continue to be relatively rare. This study examines coherence negotiation in hypertext with particularly reference to hypertext fiction. Coherence, or the quality of making sense, is a fundamental property of textness. Proceeding from the premise that coherence is a subjectively evaluated property rather than an objective quality arising directly from textual cues, the study focuses on the processes through which readers interact with hyperlinks and negotiate continuity between hypertextual fragments. The study begins with a typological discussion of textuality and an overview of the historical and technological precedents of modern hypertexts. Then, making use of text linguistic, discourse analytical, pragmatic, and narratological approaches to textual coherence, the study takes established models developed for analyzing and describing conventional texts, and examines their applicability to hypertext. Primary data derived from a collection of hyperfictions is used throughout to illustrate the mechanisms in practice. Hypertextual coherence negotiation is shown to require the ability to cognitively operate between local and global coherence by means of processing lexical cohesion, discourse topical continuities, inferences and implications, and shifting cognitive frames. The main conclusion of the study is that the style of reading required by hypertextuality fosters a new paradigm of coherence. Defined as fuzzy coherence, this new approach to textual sensemaking is predicated on an acceptance of the coherence challenges readers experience when the act of reading comes to involve repeated encounters with referentially imprecise hyperlinks and discourse topical shifts. A practical application of fuzzy coherence is shown to be in effect in the way coherence is actively manipulated in hypertext narratives.

Psychological consequences of cancer from the salutogenic and dyadic perspective

Previous empirical research has shown that positive, i.e. salutogenic, psychological resources and social support, have health-promoting effects in stressful life situations. In the present study the associations between sense of coherence (SOC), dispositional optimism, partner support, psychological distress, and quality of life among cancer patients and their partners were examined. The data was collected from Helsinki University Central Hospital in 1997 2000 by self-report questionnaires approximately 2, 8, and 14 months post diagnosis. Participants in studies I-IV were 155, 123, 153, and 147 cancer patients and their partners, respectively. The sample of the present study consisted of physically relatively well-functioning patients, whose overall psychological wellbeing was generally good as compared to the healthy population. Partners in this study, however, reacted more strongly to their partners illness and treatment. The partners displayed e.g. higher levels of anxiety and depression than the patients. The results of this study indicated that cancer patients and their partners with strong SOC and who are optimistic report fewer symptoms of distress. Moreover, patients who display an optimistic attitude to life, who receive support from their partner, and who control how they express anger have a better quality of life. The findings also confirmed that the role of the partner is significant in coping with cancer. The symptoms of depression and anxiety in patients and partners were associated, and the partner s optimism seemed to protect also the patient from elevated levels of anxiety. The role of the partner was also highlighted in the couples anger-expression styles. The patients and partners tendency to inhibit anger was associated with decreased partner support and worse patient quality of life. Finally, in the present study we found substantial gender differences. For the patients, partner support was more significant for the women than for the men. Furthermore, for the female patients, the husband s tendency to openly express anger (anger-out) had a negative impact on their psychological quality of life, whereas the wives high anger-out seemed to predict good psychological quality of life in the men. Also, in this study the female partners reported higher levels of anxiety and depression as compared to the male partners. The results of the present study extend the previous literature on positive psychological resources and psychological wellbeing among cancer couples. Furthermore, these findings support the theory on SOC and optimism as health-promoting factors. However, the construct of SOC seems to include other important elements besides optimism. The findings of this study are applicable in designing new rehabilitation programmes for cancer patients and their partners.

Sense of Community in Web Environment

The study of social phenomena in the World Wide Web has been rather fragmentary, andthere is no coherent, reseach-based theory about sense of community in Web environment. Sense of community means part of one's self-concept that has to do with perceiving oneself belonging to, and feeling affinity to a certain social grouping. The present study aimed to find evidence for sense of community in Web environment, and specifically find out what the most critical psychological factors of sense of community would be. Based on known characteristics of real life communities and sense of community, and few occational studies of Web-communities, it was hypothesized that the following factors would be the most critical ones and that they could be grouped as prerequisites, facilitators and consequences of sense of community: awareness and social presence (prerequisites), criteria for membership and borders, common purpose, social interaction and reciprocity, norms and conformity, common history (facilitators), trust and accountability (consequences). In addition to critical factors, the present study aimed to find out if this kind of grouping would be valid. Furthermore, the effect of Web-community members' background variables to sense of community was of interest. In order to answer the questions, an online-questionnaire was created and tested. It included propositions that reflect factors that precede, facilitate and follow the sense of community in Web environment. A factor analysis was calculated to find out the critical factors and analyses of variance were calculated to see if the grouping to prerequisites, facilitators and consequences was right and how the background variables would affect the sense of community in Web environment. The results indicated that the psychological structure of sense of community in Web environment could not be presented with critical variables grouped as prerequisites, facilitators and consequences. Most factors did facilitate the sense of community, but based on this data it could not be argued that some of the factors chronologically precedesense of community and some follow it. Instead, the factor analysis revealed that the most critical factors in sense of community in Web environment are 1) reciprocal involvement, 2) basic trust for others, 3) similarity and common purpose of members, and 4) shared history of members. The most influencing background variables were the member's own participation activity (indicated with reading and writing messages) and the phase in membership lifecycle (from visitor to leader). The more the member participated and the further in membership life cycle he was, the more he felt sense of community. There are many descreptions of sense of community, but the present study was one of the first to actually measure the phenomenon in Web environment, and that gained well documented, valid results based on large data, proving that sense of community in Web environment is possible, and clarifying its psychological structure, thus enhancing the understanding of sense of community in Web environment. Keywords: sense of community, Web-community, psychology of the Internet

Making sense of a transnational merger: Media texts and the (re)construction of power relations

In this study of symbolic power relations in a transnational merger, we suggest that the popular media can provide a significant arena for (re)constructing national identities and power in this kind of dramatic industrial restructuring, and are an under-utilized source of empirical data in research studies. Focusing on the press coverage of a recent Swedish-Finnish merger, we specify and illustrate a particular feature of discursive (re)construction of asymmetric power relations; superior (Swedish) and inferior (Finnish) national identities, which, we argue, are embedded in the history of colonization and domination between the two nations. The findings of the present study lead us to suggest that a lens taken from post-colonial theory is particularly useful in understanding the wider symbolic power implications of international industrial restructuring.

On the fundamentals of coherence theory

In the thesis I study various quantum coherence phenomena and create some of the foundations for a systematic coherence theory. So far, the approach to quantum coherence in science has been purely phenomenological. In my thesis I try to answer the question what quantum coherence is and how it should be approached within the framework of physics, the metatheory of physics and the terminology related to them. It is worth noticing that quantum coherence is a conserved quantity that can be exactly defined. I propose a way to define quantum coherence mathematically from the density matrix of the system. Degenerate quantum gases, i.e., Bose condensates and ultracold Fermi systems, form a good laboratory to study coherence, since their entropy is small and coherence is large, and thus they possess strong coherence phenomena. Concerning coherence phenomena in degenerate quantum gases, I concentrate in my thesis mainly on collective association from atoms to molecules, Rabi oscillations and decoherence. It appears that collective association and oscillations do not depend on the spin-statistics of particles. Moreover, I study the logical features of decoherence in closed systems via a simple spin-model. I argue that decoherence is a valid concept also in systems with a possibility to experience recoherence, i.e., Poincaré recurrences. Metatheoretically this is a remarkable result, since it justifies quantum cosmology: to study the whole universe (i.e., physical reality) purely quantum physically is meaningful and valid science, in which decoherence explains why the quantum physical universe appears to cosmologists and other scientists very classical-like. The study of the logical structure of closed systems also reveals that complex enough closed (physical) systems obey a principle that is similar to Gödel's incompleteness theorem of logic. According to the theorem it is impossible to describe completely a closed system within the system, and the inside and outside descriptions of the system can be remarkably different. Via understanding this feature it may be possible to comprehend coarse-graining better and to define uniquely the mutual entanglement of quantum systems.

Making Sense of Value and Value Co-Creation in Service Logic

In order to further develop the logic of service, value creation, value co-creation and value have to be formally and rigorously defined, so that the nature, content and locus of value and the roles of service providers and customers in value creation can be unambiguously assessed. In the present article, following the underpinning logic of value-in-use, it is demonstrated that in order to achieve this, value creation is best defined as the customer’s creation of value-in-use. The analysis shows that the firm’s and customer’s processes and activities can be divided into a provider sphere, closed for the customer, and a customer sphere, closed for the firm. Value creation occurs in the customer sphere, whereas firms in the provider sphere facilitate value creation by producing resources and processes which represent potential value or expected value-in use for their customers. By getting access to the closed customer sphere, firms can create a joint value sphere and engage in customers’ value creation as co-creators of value with them. This approach establishes a theoretically sound foundation for understanding value creation in service logic, and enables meaningful managerial implications, for example as to what is required for co-creation of value, and also further theoretical elaborations.

Spinaalistenoosipotilaiden psyykkinen hyvinvointi ennen leikkaushoitoa ja sen jälkeen

Surgical treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a treatment option for those patients who remain severely symptomatic after a course of conservative treatment. Majority of the patients treated surgically enjoy good-to-excellent outcomes with respect to pain alleviation and functional recovery. However, between 20% and 40% of the patients who have surgery for LSS do not benefit from it. The knowledge of the psychological factors associated with recovery and treatment outcome is still scarce. The aim of this study was to assess LSS patients selected for surgical treatment. Specifically, the study assessed the prevalence of depression (Beck Depression Inventory, BDI) before surgical treatment and three months after the treatment. Also preoperative life satisfaction (four-item Life Satisfaction scale) of the LSS patients was studied. Furthermore, the patients satisfaction with surgery outcome at the three months postoperative stage was studied. One-fifth (20%) of the LSS-patients were found to have depression preoperatively. The patients assessments of the pain intensity or location were not associated with depression. The factors that did associate with depression were subjective disability of everyday living and poor life satisfaction. In addition to this, low sense of coherence and poor life satisfaction were associated with depression in logistic regression models. Significant associations were seen between preoperative depression and postoperative high disability scores, high symptom severity scores and higher pain intensity ratings. The patients with continuous depression (60% of the patients who had preoperative depression) showed less improvement in symptom severity, disability, pain and walking capacity than the patients who did not experience depression at any stage. In those patients who recovered from depression (35% of the patients with preoperative depression), the postoperative improvement was rather similar to the improvement seen in the normal mood group. One-fourth (25%) of the preoperative patients with LSS were found to be dissatisfied with life. The dissatisfied patients were significantly younger and had more self-reported somatic comorbidity. The dissatisfied patients had also elevated subjective disability scores and more extensive pain locations. Also lower coping resources and higher BDI scores were associated with life dissatisfaction. Younger age and somatic comorbidity were associated with life dissatisfaction in regression models. Two-thirds (66%) of the patients were at least clearly satisfied with the surgery outcome at three months postoperative stage. In group comparisons, the lack of physical, functional and emotional well-being was associated with the patients dissatisfaction with the surgery outcome. Younger age, postoperative symptom severity, disability and depression were independently associated with dissatisfaction with the surgery outcome. The results show that depression and psychological well-being are important factors with respect to LSS patients functional ability and recovery both before and three months after surgical treatment. Therefore, the clinical practice recommendations should include an assessment of depression

"Oma entinen on palannut takaisin elämään" : Kuntoutuksen vaikuttavuus aikuisena kuuroutuneiden henkilöiden elämänhallintaan ja psykososiaaliseen hyvinvointiin

Objective The objective of this study was to learn about the psychosocial well-being and life management of Finnish adults with late deafness or hearing loss and to observe the effectiveness of the rehabilitation courses they participated in. Methods For my study I used indicators which were suitable for the evaluation of life management and psychosocial well-being of late-deafened adults. The first part of the study was conducted during 2009 as a questionnaire on three rehabilitation courses in Kopola, a course center of the Finnish Federation of Hard of Hearing. The follow-up study was done at the third period of the courses during 2009 2010. The questionnaire contained both open and structured questions. The questionnaire consisted of five areas concerning life management and psychosocial well-being: sense of coherence (life management), human relations and social support, mood, self-esteem and satisfaction with life. I also asked the participants to reflect on their experiences of group rehabilitation. Results and conclusions The participants consisted of seven women and three men. They were approximately 63 years old and were all retired. Loss of hearing was described to have affected their social life, free time, and in general made their lives more difficult. From the course the participants hoped to gain new skills such as signed speech and lip-reading, uplift their mood, accept their loss of hearing and experience peer support. After the courses they replied that they had more close relations with whom they also were a little more in contact with. More participants were satisfied with e.g. their ability to take care of themselves, their free time, financial situation, family life, mental resources and physical shape. Majority of the participants showed symptoms of depression when the courses started, but at the end of the courses these signs had moderated or disappeared for most of them. The participants felt that during the rehabilitation they had been heard, respected, accepted and been taken care of. The course provided the possibility for confiding, and the discussions gave the participants support and consolidation. In conclusion, the course affected positively on the acclimatization to the hearing loss and the empowerment of the participants. The results of this study can be utilized in disability services, the development of rehabilitation and in the social- and health services of senior citizens.

Given and News : Media discourse and the construction of community on national days

National anniversaries such as independence days demand precise coordination in order to make citizens change their routines to forego work and spend the day at rest or at festivities that provide social focus and spectacle. The complex social construction of national days is taken for granted and operates as a given in the news media, which are the main agents responsible for coordinating these planned disruptions of normal routines. This study examines the language used in the news to construct the rather unnatural idea of national days and to align people in observing them. The data for the study consist of news stories about the Fourth of July in the New York Times, sampled over 150 years and are supplemented by material from other sources and other countries. The study is multidimensional, applying concepts from pragmatics (speech acts, politeness, information structure), systemic functional linguistics (the interpersonal metafunction and the Appraisal framework) and cognitive linguistics (frames, metaphor) as well as journalism and communications to arrive at an interdisciplinary understanding of how resources for meaning are used by writers and readers of the news stories. The analysis shows that on national anniversaries, nations tend to be metaphorized as persons having birthdays, to whom politeness should be shown. The face of the nation is to be respected in the sense of identifying the nation's interests as one's own (positive face) and speaking of citizen responsibilities rather than rights (negative face). Resources are available for both positive and negative evaluations of events and participants and the newspaper deftly changes footings (Goffman 1981) to demonstrate the required politeness while also heteroglossically allowing for a certain amount of disattention and even protest - within limits, for state holidays are almost never construed as Bakhtinian festivals, as they tend to reaffirm the hierarchy rather than invert it. Celebrations are evaluated mainly for impressiveness, and for the essentially contested quality of appropriateness, which covers norms of predictability, size, audience response, aesthetics, and explicit reference to the past. Events may also be negatively evaluated as dull ("banal") or inauthentic ("hoopla"). Audiences are evaluated chiefly in terms of their enthusiasm, or production of appropriate displays for emotional response, for national days are supposed to be occasions of flooding-out of nationalistic feeling. By making these evaluations, the newspaper reinforces its powerful position as an independent critic, while at the same time playing an active role in the construction and reproduction of emotional order embodied in "the nation's birthday." As an occasion for mobilization and demonstrations of power, national days may be seen to stand to war in the relation of play to fighting (Bateson 1955). Evidence from the newspaper's coverage of recent conflicts is adduced to support this analysis. In the course of the investigation, methods are developed for analyzing large collections of newspaper content, particularly topical soft news and feature materials that have hitherto been considered less influential and worthy of study than so-called hard news. In his work on evaluation in newspaper stories, White (1998) proposed that the classic hard news story is focused on an event that threatens the social order, but news of holidays and celebrations in general does not fit this pattern, in fact its central event is a reproduction of the social order. Thus in the system of news values (Galtung and Ruge 1965), national holiday news draws on "ground" news values such as continuity and predictability rather than "figure" news values such as negativity and surprise. It is argued that this ground helps form a necessary space for hard news to be seen as important, similar to the way in which the information structure of language is seen to rely on the regular alternation of given and new information (Chafe 1994).

At the Limits of Presentation : Coming-into-Presence and its Aesthetic Relevance in Jean-Luc Nancy's Philosophy

This study investigates the significance of art in Jean-Luc Nancy s philosophy. I argue that the notion of art contributes to some of Nancy s central ontological ideas. Therefore, I consider art s importance in its own right whether art does have ontological significance, and if so, how one should describe this with respect to the theme of presentation. According to my central argument, with his thinking on art Nancy attempts to give one viewpoint to what is called the metaphysics of presence and to its deconstruction. On which grounds, as I propose, may one say that art is not reducible to philosophy? The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part, Presentation as a Philosophical Theme, is a historical genesis of the central concepts associated with the birth of presentation in Nancy s philosophy. I examine this from the viewpoint of the differentiation between the ontological notions of presentation and representation by concentrating on the influence of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, as well as of Hegel and Kant. I give an overview of the way in which being or sense for Nancy is to be described as a coming-into-presence or presentation . Therefore, being takes place in its singular plurality. I argue that Nancy redevelops Heidegger s account of being in two principal ways: first, in rethinking the ontico-ontological difference, and secondly, by striving to radicalize the Heideggerian concept of Mitsein, being-with . I equally wish to show the importance of Derrida s notion of différance and its inherence in Nancy s questioning of being that rests on the unfoundedness of existence. The second part, From Ontology to Art, draws on the importance of art and the aesthetic. If, in Nancy, the question of art touches upon its own limit as the limit of nothingness, how is art able to open its own strangeness and our exposure to this strangeness? My aim is to investigate how Nancy s thinking on art finds its place within the conceptual realm of its inherent difference and interval. My central concern is the thought of originary ungroundedness and the plurality of art and of the arts. As for the question of the difference between art and philosophy, I wish to show that what differentiates art from thought is the fact that art exposes what is obvious but not apparent, if apparent is understood in the sense of givenness. As for art s ability to deconstruct Nancy s ontological notions, I suggest that in question in art is its original heterogeneity and diversity. Art is a matter of differing art occurs singularly, as a local difference. With this in mind, I point out that in reflecting on art in terms of spacing and interval, as a thinker of difference Nancy comes closer to Derrida and his idea of différance than to the structure of Heidegger s ontological difference.

Locus Bonus : The Relationship of the Roman Villa to its Environment in the Vicinity of Rome

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship of the Roman villa to its environment. The villa was an important feature of the countryside intended both for agricultural production and for leisure. Manuals of Roman agriculture give instructions on how to select a location for an estate. The ideal location was a moderate slope facing east or south in a healthy area and good neighborhood, near good water resources and fertile soils. A road or a navigable river or the sea was needed for transportation of produce. A market for selling the produce, a town or a village, should have been nearby. The research area is the surroundings of the city of Rome, a key area for the development of the villa. The materials used consist of archaeological settlement sites, literary and epigraphical evidence as well as environmental data. The sites include all settlement sites from the 7th century BC to 5th century AD to examine changes in the tradition of site selection. Geographical Information Systems were used to analyze the data. Six aspects of location were examined: geology, soils, water resources, terrain, visibility/viewability and relationship to roads and habitation centers. Geology was important for finding building materials and the large villas from the 2nd century BC onwards are close to sources of building stones. Fertile soils were sought even in the period of the densest settlement. The area is rich in water, both rainfall and groundwater, and finding a water supply was fairly easy. A certain kind of terrain was sought over very long periods: a small spur or ridge shoulder facing preferably south with an open area in front of the site. The most popular villa resorts are located on the slopes visible from almost the entire Roman region. A visible villa served the social and political aspirations of the owner, whereas being in the villa created a sense of privacy. The area has a very dense road network ensuring good connectivity from almost anywhere in the region. The best visibility/viewability, dense settlement and most burials by roads coincide, creating a good neighborhood. The locations featuring the most qualities cover nearly a quarter of the area and more than half of the settlement sites are located in them. The ideal location was based on centuries of practical experience and rationalized by the literary tradition.

Certainty or Faith? Arendt's and Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Cartesian Foundationalism

Epistemological foundationalism has for centuries attempted to unify all scientific inquiry into the context of one grand science, the first philosophy. One of the most important tasks of this tradition has been to ground all knowledge on absolutely certain foundations. In this master s thesis I ask the following question: To what extent and under what conditions is it possible to achieve absolute certainty in the sense of the attempts of Cartesian foundationalism? By examining how the 20th century philosophers, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) interpret the epistemological methodology of René Descartes, I claim that the Cartesian achievement of absolute certainty rests on the implicit presupposition of an epistemologically prior form of faith in the world and trust (pistis) in other conscious beings. I show that knowledge is possible only within the context of a common world that is inhabited by several conscious beings that share a common linguistic system. This threefold element is shown to be the bedrock condition for any kind of philosophical inquiry. The main literature sources for this thesis are The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt, Le Visible et l invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Meditationes de Prima Philosophiae by René Descartes and Erfahrung und Urteil by Edmund Husserl.