Aim: The overall aims were to describe perspectives of living with diabetes, to develop a patient-reported outcome and experience measure for the Swedish National Diabetes Register, and to initiate the evaluation of evidence of measurement quality for that measure. A further aim was to describe health-related quality of life and to assess its associations with glycaemic control.

Methods and results: In study I, aspects important to adults with diabetes embracing experiences of daily life and support from diabetes care were identified through 29 semi-structured qualitative interviews. In study II, those aspects were used to develop the Diabetes Questionnaire. Expert reviews, six cognitive interviews, and a regional survey of 1,599 adults with diabetes yielded supporting evidence for content and face validity, test-retest reliability, and answerability. For studies III-IV, the Diabetes Questionnaire and the SF-36v2 were presented to 4,976 adults with diabetes in a nationwide cross-sectional survey. In study III, adjusted regression analyses showed that adults with high-risk glycaemic control have lower health-related quality of life than those with well-controlled glycaemic control. In study IV, correlation, machine learning and adjusted regression analyses demonstrated support for construct validity. The Diabetes Questionnaire captures some SF-36v2 dimensions while adding information not targeted by clinical variables or the SF 36v2 and it is sensitive to differences between groups of glycaemic control.

Conclusion: The Diabetes Questionnaire has the potential to support clinical meetings and assessments and hence help to bring patients’ perspectives to the fore for diabetes care.

This thesis aims to develop knowledge and empirical understanding relating to encounters between preschool children and their teachers. Supported by Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue and research, it describes the interpersonal encounters between preschool children and their teachers as being the most significant aspect of educational practice as well as foundational for learning. This doctoral thesis comprises two studies, both of which are video-documented observational studies conducted at a preschool that had 53 children and ten teachers.

The first study, which is a summarised rewrite of a published licentiate thesis, examines dialogue as being a form of qualitative encounter between teacher and child. The focus of interest is the effect on a dialogue when more children join one already in progress. Results demonstrate that the dialogue can be interrupted; interrupted and then resumed with a new participant; interrupted and then resumed without a new participant; or simply continued without a new participant. It is the action on the part of the teacher in these situations that seems to have the greatest effect.

The second study focuses on the preconditions of educational encounters. Of interest here are the following questions: what aspects of a teacher’s actions can be understood as forming the preconditions of educational encounters?; what aspects of teaching are significant when it comes to opportunities for educational encounters?; and how can relationship- and knowledge-building dimensions of educational encounters be considered intertwined?

Results demonstrate that teachers’ actions that serve to create the preconditions of educational encounters are often everyday and spontaneous, where attentiveness, tolerance, affirmation and extending are significant. These actions often occur simultaneously and are affected by the actions of the children. Together, the results provide opportunity to put words to and highlight how small everyday actions on the part of the teacher can be considered fundamental for educational encounters that simultaneously build relationships and knowledge.

There were different forms of the Black Death, and they were spread in different ways, though they were caused by the same organism. The Bubonic Plague was a form carried by such animals as rats and the fleas that lived on them, both of which exhibited symptoms of the disease. When a flea bit an infected rat, it would get sick; subsequently, if it bit another rat or a human being, it would vomit as it bit, infecting that animal or person.