Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

About: Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences is a education organization based out in Oslo, Norway. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 1420 authors who have published 3508 publications receiving 77843 citations.

Understanding everyday life of morbidly obese adults-habits and body image.

Abstract: 2012 B. Christian et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in an y medium, provided the original work is properly cited

The Prehospital assessment of severe trauma patients` performed by the specialist ambulance nurse in Sweden - a phenomenographic study.

Abstract: A common feature of prehospital emergency care is the short and fragmentary patient encounters with increased demands for efficient and rapid treatment. Crucial decisions are often made and the premise is the specialist ambulance nurse’s ability to capture the situation instantaneously. The assessment is therefore a pre-requisite for decisions about appropriate actions. However, the low exposure to severe trauma cases in Sweden leads to vulnerability for the specialist ambulance nurse, which makes the assessment more difficult. Our objective was to describe specialist ambulance nurses’ perceptions of assessing patients exposed to severe trauma. This study had a phenomenographic approach and was performed in 2011 as an interview study. 15 specialist ambulance nurses with a minimum of 2.5 years of experience from praxis were included. The analysis of data was performed using phenomenography according to Marton. The perceptions of assessing patients exposed to severe trauma were divided into: To be prepared for emergency situations, Confidence in one’s own leadership and Developing professional knowledge. This study reveals that the specialist ambulance nurse, on the scene of accident, finds the task of assessment of severe trauma patients difficult and complicated. In some cases, even exceeding what they feel competent to accomplish. The specialist ambulance nurses feel that no trauma scenarios are alike and that more practical skills, more training, exercise and feedback are needed.

General self-efficacy in the Norwegian population: Differences and similarities between sociodemographic groups.

Abstract: Aims: General self-efficacy (GSE) refers to optimistic self-beliefs of being able to perform and control behaviors, and is linked with various physical and mental health outcomes. Measures of self-efficacy are commonly used in health research with clinical populations, but are less explored in relationship to sociodemographic characteristics in general populations. This study investigated GSE in relation to sociodemographic characteristics in the general population in Norway. Methods: As part of a larger national survey, the GSE scale was administered to a general population sample, and 1787 out of 4961 eligible participants (response rate 36%) completed the scale. Group comparisons were conducted using independent t-tests and one-way analyses of variance. Linear regression analysis was used to examine factors independently associated with GSE. Results: GSE was lower for older compared to younger participants (p < 0.001). It was higher for men compared to women (p < 0.001), higher for those with higher levels of education compared to those with lower levels (p < 0.001) and higher for those in work compared to their counterparts (p < 0.001). Controlling for all variables, male gender and employment were independently associated with higher GSE. Age moderated the associations between gender and employment on one hand, and GSE on the other. The association between being male and having higher GSE was more pronounced in younger age, as was the association between being employed and having higher GSE. Conclusions: Male gender and being employed were related to higher GSE among persons in the general population in Norway, and these associations were stronger among persons of younger age. The findings are considered fairly representative for the Norwegian population.

Do Code Smells Impact the Effort of Different Maintenance Programming Activities

Abstract: Empirical studies have shown so far that code smells have relatively low impact over maintenance effort at file level. We surmise that previous studies have found low effects of code smells because the effort considered is a "sheer-effort" that does not distinguish between the kinds of developers' activities. In our study, we investigate the effects of code smells at the activity level. Examples of activities are: reading, editing, searching, and navigating, which are performed independently over different files during maintenance. We conjecture that structural attributes represented in the form of different code smells do indeed have an effect on the effort for performing certain kinds of activities. To verify this conjecture, we revisit a previous study about the impact of code smell on maintenance effort, using the same dataset, but considering activity effort. Six professional developers were hired to perform three maintenance tasks on four functionally equivalent Java Systems. Each developer performs two maintenance tasks. During maintenance task, we monitor developers' logs. Then, we define an annotation schema to identify developers' activities and assess whether code smells affect different maintenance activities. Results show that different code smells affect differently activity effort. Yet, the size of the changes performed to solve the task impacts the effort of all activities more than code smells and file size. While code smells impact the editing and navigating effort more than file size, the file size impacts the reading and searching activities more than code smells. One major implication of these results is that if code smells indeed affect the effort of certain kinds of activities, it means that their effects are contingent on the type of maintenance task at hand, where some kinds of activities will become more predominant than others.

Entrepreneurial growth strategies: the female touch

Abstract: Purpose – Research on entrepreneurship has documented differences in male and female entrepreneurs' growth ambitions. It has sometimes been criticized for disregarding important questions and contributions and for favoring a purely economic perspective. This includes a tendency to compare female entrepreneurs with a male norm. In this article, the authors, therefore, apply a more constructive approach and ask how and why entrepreneurial strategies are gendered. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – By analysing six cases, three female- and three male-dominated companies, the authors examined how men and women do business. The authors based the analysis on Miles and Snow's typology on product and market strategy and at the same time expanded it. Findings – The findings substantiated that women and men have similar qualities as entrepreneurs, but women's ambitions and values tend to be different to those espoused by men. This influences their growth strategies. The Miles and ...