The purpose of this study is to adjust and develop Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50) specifically for the military domain. Many safety climate instruments have been developed for complex organizations but few with a military perspective including military exercises and physical training. Data were collected during two separate occasions, experiment one (n = 956) and experiment two (n = 377). The questionnaire was distributed to civilian and military personnel working in the Swedish Armed Forces and to military cadets. The results of experiment one was then analyzed using principal component analyses and confirmatory factor analyses, the factor structure was reproduced in experiment two. The results from the study confirmed the reliability and validity of NOSACQ-50 as a safety climate instrument in the military organization. However, several new factors were identified with the military safety climate questionnaire (MSCQ). Physical fitness and exercises are important activities in the military but are less important in other organizations which could explain why it isn’t present in traditional safety climate instruments. This study identifies several limitations one being the design of questions suitable for both military and civilian personnel. Another limitation is combat operations, this data collection recognizes the field but was unable to capture data from actual combat operations. Further research is needed to fully develop more dimensions for both exercises and combat operations.

Large numbers of passengers and large amounts of goods are transported by air every year. This attracts the interest of terrorists, which poses high demands on aerodrome security. Technological solutions, and rules and regulations, have been widely implemented to detect security threats, but there is also a need for leading security indicators. Safety culture and climate have been identified as such leading indicators. The aim of this study was to develop and test a questionnaire instrument to measure aerodrome security climate. The development contained an expert focus group, expert panel, two pilot tests at four and five airports, respectively, and one full-scale study at nine Swedish commercial airports. The final instrument comprised 12 dimensions grounded in previous safety culture and climate research, and targeting three organizational levels. It had good psychometric properties and was validated against compliant as well as participative security behavior. We believe ADSECQ is suitable to evaluate the aerodrome security climate standard, pinpoint security climate areas for improvement, and evaluate the effect of interventions.

During the Covid-19 pandemic social media have become an important tool for spreading information from government agencies regarding restrictions. Government accounts and public health care organizations have used different social media platforms such as Twitter to communicate with the Swedish public. The Swedish public have interacted with the information, arguing for a stricter or a more relaxed approach to Covid-19 recommendations. This social network analysis aims at exploring statistical methods to investigate patterns made by twitter accounts commenting the Swedish Armed Forces field hospital activities and the national Covid-19 strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Data was collected using the twitter platform and the Ncapture add-on with Google Chrome. The interactions stored in the tweets and replies section (TRS) from 227 twitter accounts were collected and coded with the NVivo auto code function. Twitter usernames that occurred in less than 35 % of the 227 TRS were deleted. The 227 extracted TRS were treated as scale items and occurring twitter-names which interacted with the TRS as respondents n=761. Analysis of the factor structure with PCA and CFA indicated four factors: 1) Military policy, 2) Right wing politics, 3) Law enforcement, 4) Politics and strategy. Structural Equation Modelling revealed interrelationships between the factors. Thus, Military policy, Law enforcement and Politics and strategy had a direct effect on Right wing politics. Politics and strategy had a direct effect on Military policy and Law enforcement. This study revealed that PCA, CFA and SEM have the potential to discover the core of a thought collective. Despite the obvious dangers with misinformation and political extremism on social media, policymakers need to tackle misinformation and disinformation, protecting electoral processes and facilitating public discussion, built on the three fundamental democratic principles of equality, representation and participation.

In the midst of a semester the COVID-19 pandemic forced many universities to abruptly reorganize courses from being taught on campus to completely being imparted online. Therefore, the present study seeks to explore how students perceived the impact of COVID-19 on psychological well-being, stress, and satisfaction with their studies in a Swedish university. Participants were 560 university students in West Sweden attending courses during the spring semester of 2020.

The study is part of a larger study involving eight different countries, including Sweden, with the objective to examine the impact of COVID-19 on university student’s well-being. Although this abstract only cover a small part of the collected data, the Swedish participants. The same questionnaire was sent to all fellow countries. In June 2020, 14571 students at a Swedish university received an e-mail including information about the study, an invitation to participate, and a link to the questionnaire. In total, 560 students chose to take part in the study. They were women (318) and men (242), mean age 29. 24 years (18-78) attending courses at undergraduate - (87.60%) and graduate levels. Most participants studied fulltime (87.60%), resided at home(71.60%) and stated they were following Governments recommendations about protection from COVID-19 (79.33%). The questionnaire was written in English, was administered with Qualtrics XM software, and took approximately 20 minutes to complete. The questionnaire included measures of Concerns about COVID-19, Perceived Stress, Well-being, Satisfaction with university information, University Support for Online Learning, having Sufficient Technical Requirements, Social Identification, and Satisfaction with studies. Cronbach’s alfa for the different scales ranged from .70 to .93. Spearman correlation analysis showed that satisfaction with studies was significantly related to all other measures. High concerns about Corona (-.096), low University support for Online Learning (-.638), low Satisfaction with University Information (-.549), low Social Identification (-.469), low Well-Being (-.494), High Stress (-.349), and insufficient Technical Preconditions (-.275) affected satisfaction with studies negatively. Mean comparisons with t-test showed significant differences between males and females. Males reported higher satisfaction with studies but significantly lower well-being, less satisfaction with university support for online learning and university information. The differences between males and females, although statistically significant, mean differences were small to moderate (.023-.044).It is concluded that University contributions to the change from campus- to online studies are significant factors affecting student’s well-being and satisfaction with studies. Furthermore, the role of Social Identification in students Well-being and Satisfaction with studies should be further investigated. The planes for the future is to write a comparative study in the European project.

The aim of this study was to investigate critical incidents in a large medical exercise (mass casualty incident) including the Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) and a regional hospital using activity theory. A total of 96 individuals played injured patients with a variety of injuries from simple cuts and bruises to severe head injuries. Patients were evacuated by different means of transportation i.e. minivan, ambulance, military as well as civilian ambulance helicopter.We participated in the final planning of the exercise in order to obtain access for the research team. Data was collected through observations, shadowing technique and 20 semi structured interviews. Professionals from the regional hospital and SwAF as well as evaluating personnel were interviewed. The interviewees were asked to describe significant events experienced during the exercise.

Two researchers observed the triage and registration process in the ambulance intake and the emergency room of the hospital. One researcher observed the command and control (C2) function within the mass casualty management (MCM).Two students from the Swedish Defense University and three from University West collected data by playing injured patients according to the determined injure play card provided by SwAF. The students were instructed to observe what they themselves would classify as critical incidents based on their own subject i.e. education, economics and command and control studies. Five questions guided the observations: What happened? Who were involved? What consequences did the incident have? How were these consequences handled by the organization? Did the incident affect other areas?Data was analyzed, thematized and coded using the third generation of activity theory and its areas: tools, rules, community, division of labor, subject and object as a guide for identifying contradictions within the regional hospital and the emergency medical plan developed for handling large casualty events.Preliminary results indicated that participating personnel were not faced with conditions mimicking real life but learned to deal with a corrected version of reality i.e. preparations before the start of the exercise created shortcuts affecting the veracity of the exercise. This was manifested through contradictions within and between the activity systems and the conflicting motives carried by the objects.The results might impact the future designs of large exercises, influencing the conditions that the participants will face in exercises and thereby increasing preparedness for authentic situations.

The aim of this pilot study is to adjust the NOSACQ-50 to the work environment of military organizations.NOSACQ-50 is a validated tool successfully used in several organizational domains to measure occupationalsafety climate (OSC). In general, few studies have been published investigating OSC in militaryorganizations. NOSACQ-50 consists of 50 items across 7 OSC dimensions, i.e. group members' sharedperceptions of: 1) management safety priority, commitment and competence; 2) management safetyempowerment; 3) management safety justice; 4) workers' safety commitment; 5) workers' safety priority andrisk non-acceptance; 6) safety communication, learning, and trust in co-workers' safety competence; 7)workers' trust in the efficacy of safety systems. To assess the relevance of the NOSACQ-50 items, a revisedversion of the instrument was sent to 11 military safety experts. In addition, 19 items pertaining to areas notcovered by NOSACQ-50 were validated by the same experts. After contents validation, data from 517participants from 4 garrisons were collected. The results showed that NOSACQ-50 had acceptable reliabilityscores (.70-.89.), and the factor structure was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Principalcomponent analyses (PCA) of the supplementary 19 items showed that 12 items grouped into threedimensions (alpha .74-.91): Management enabling safety performance, personnel's knowledge of andcompetence in national laws regulating safety and Unit ethics. In conclusion, preliminary results showed theadjusted NOSACQ-50 instrument could be used to measure OSC in military organizations. However,additional studies must be performed to improve and develop military specific dimensions not covered byNOSACQ-50.

Att de flygplan som används i flygtrafiken är oskadade är självklart en viktig förutsättning för flygsäkerheten. När flygplanen befinner sig på mark sker en mängd olika operativa moment i och omkring planen, ofta under tidspress, och som involverar ett stort antal individer, organisationer, och olika typer av teknisk apparatur. För att flygplanen inte ska komma till skada i dessa operationer måste de utföras enligt tydliga procedurer, med kunskap och noggrannhet och med hög grad av koordinering av olika moment och aktörer. Detta ställer höga krav på de formella säkerhetssystemen. Men flygsäkerheten påverkas även av individuella och sociala fenomen. De sociala förutsättningarna handlar om hur sociala normer ser ut och utvecklas på arbetsplatsen. Här blir fenomen som säkerhetskultur och säkerhetsklimat betydelsefulla. En förutsättning för att kunna arbeta med att utveckla flygsäkerhetsklimatet så att det än bättre stöder en hög flygsäkerhet vid flygplatsarbetet är att man kan skaffa sig en uppfattning om kvaliteten på säkerhetsklimatet. Är det högt eller lågt? Vilka är de svaga punkterna, som behöver åtgärdas? Och vilka är de starka sidorna, som man bör gynna ytterligare? Ett sätt att mäta säkerhetsklimatet är genom enkät. Denna delrapport ger en teoretisk bakgrund till begreppet säkerhetsklimat och beskriver sedan utvecklingen av ett enkätinstrument för att mäta flygsäkerhetsklimat vid flygplatsarbete; Airdrome Aviation Safety Climate Questionnaire, ADASCQ.

Attention is a basic cognitive function necessary in most daily activities. Beneficial effects on cognitive abilities after exposure to nature have been reported. To explore if relaxation indoors and in nature differently affect directed attention and physiological measures, 51 participants (39 women) were measured on directed attention with the Necker Cube Pattern Control Test before and after a guided progressive relaxation session indoors and outdoors in nature. Additionally, systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate were measured before and after the relaxation. Participants’ environmental preference was explored. The main result showed an environmental effect on directed attention in favour of the natural environment. No similar environmental effect on physiological measures was seen. The results indicate that relaxation in natural environments had a positive effect on directed attention and hence could be an important component for preventive and rehabilitative interventions for stress-related symptoms.

En viktig förutsättning för att flygtrafiken ska kunna bedrivas säkert är att personer och farliga, förbjudna föremål som kan hota luftfartsskyddet inte ges tillträde till flygplatsens behörighetsområden eller till flygplanen eller utrustning eller funktioner som är betydelsefulla för flygplanens säkerhet. För att säkerställa detta finns säkerhetsledningssystem på flygplatserna. Dessa system omfattar såväl tekniska delsystem för säkerhetskontroll, som rutiner och procedurer för upprätthållande och utveckling av hög nivå på luftfartsskyddet. De anställda på flygplatsen har därmed en avgörande betydelse för luftfartsskyddet, och alltså blir inte bara tekniska och strukturella utan även individuella och sociala fenomen viktiga att beakta. De sociala förutsättningarna handlar om hur sociala normer med betydelse för luftfartsskyddet ser ut och utvecklas på arbetsplatsen. Sådana normer utvecklas på basis av vad de anställda uppfattar som viktiga värden i organisationen och gruppen, och dessa bedömningar baseras i hög grad på perceptioner (det man kan uppfatta med sina sinnen) och erfarenheter från det dagliga arbetet. Här blir fenomen som organisationskultur och organisationsklimat betydelsefulla. En förutsättning för att kunna arbeta med att utveckla organisationsklimatet så att det än bättre stöder en hög nivå på luftfartsskyddet vid flygplatsarbetet är att man kan skaffa sig en uppfattning om karaktären på säkerhetsklimatet för luftfartsskydd. Är det högt eller lågt? Vilka är de svaga punkterna, som behöver utvecklas? Och vilka är de starka sidorna, som man bör gynna ytterligare? Ett sätt att mäta säkerhetsklimat är genom enkät. Denna rapport ger en teoretisk bakgrund till begreppet säkerhetsklimat och beskriver utvecklingen av ett enkätinstrument för att mäta luftfartsskyddsklimat vid flygplatsarbete; Airdrome Security Climate Questionnaire, ADSECQ.

Sick leave due to stress-related disorders is increasing in Sweden after a period of decrease. To avoid that individuals living under heavy stress develop more severe stress-related disorders, different stress management interventions are offered. Self-assessed health, burnout-scores and well-being are commonly used as outcome measures. Few studies have used sick-leave to compare effects of stress interventions. A new approach is to use nature and garden in a multimodal stress management context. This study aimed to explore effects on burnout, work ability, stress-related health symptoms, and sick leave for 33 women participating in a 12-weeks nature based stress management course and to investigate how the nature/garden activities were experienced. A mixed method approach was used. Measures were taken at course start and three follow-ups. Results showed decreased burnout-scores and long-term sick leaves, and increased work ability; furthermore less stress-related symptoms were reported. Tools and strategies to better handle stress were achieved and were widely at use at all follow-ups. The garden and nature content played an important role for stress relief and for tools and strategies to develop. The results from this study points to beneficial effects of using garden activities and natural environments in a stress management intervention.