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Purpose: Research suggests that male victims of interpersonal violence (IPV) experience differential treatment when seeking help from service providers. However, little research has explicitly investigated gender differences in actual service provision. The present study investigated whether there are gender differences in the number and type of services provided to IPV victims by the social services (research question 1), as well as if these gender differences vary depending on the victim’s type of relation with the offender (research question 2).

Methods: We used data from the SU-Kvinnofrid (“Women’s peace/safety”) project, with information on all IPV victims (n = 2,998; 2,814 female and 184 male) seeking support from the social services in 34 Swedish municipalities. Data were analyzed using logistic and negative binomial regression models.

Results: On average, there were no or only small gender differences in service provision. However, these average differences masked significant variation based on the offender’s relationship to the victim. Men generally received fewer services when victimized by a partner but more when victimized by a non-partner (e.g., a family member); a pattern primarily driven by safety-focused and, to a lesser extent, practical support.

Conclusions: The findings do not support the view that there is a general bias against male victims. Rather, they suggest that service provision is critically shaped by the inherently relational nature of IPV, and that gender differences in treatment cannot be understood by only focusing on the gender of the victim. Future research should not only adopt a positional perspective – stressing men as victims – but also a relational perspective, focusing on how different types of relationships influence service provision. 

Care robots are described as a solution to quality issues in home care services. Since several stakeholders are involved in home care with robots, it is important to make different perspectives on quality visible. On the basis of the above premises, the aim of this study is twofold. First, we identify and compare perspectives on quality that are articulated when local policy, care professionals, and older people describe medication-dispensing robots in home care services. Second, we show how dominant articulations of quality function to institutionalize organizational rationalization. Based on these inquiries, we discuss issues that arise from differences in stakeholders’ articulations and the need to balance perspectives on quality in policy and practice. Theories about articulation and thematic analysis have been used to analyse municipal policy documents and qualitative interview material. While quality is perceived differently by different stakeholders, articulations in policy and by professionals are similar; organizational matters are highlighted. Among older people, consequences in everyday life are emphasized. Possibilities for connecting different positive values to care robots seem to be an enabling condition for implementing robots in home care services. It is important, however, that organizational takes on quality are not given a hegemonic position. Organizational matters are fundamental in care, but do not align with the wishes and needs of older people. To pursue high-quality care with robots, policy should balance key stakeholders’ perspectives of quality. This can be achieved by forming alliances between policy makers and older people. Professionals, however, are key, given their unique insights into both users’ needs and organizational preconditions.

Introduction: Peer-to-peer sharing of personal health data on social media is increasingly used as a strategy to support public health goals. Such sharing is often assumed to motivate individuals to adopt or maintain healthy behaviors. However, the social and ethical implications of sharing-based interventions remain insufficiently examined. This paper offers an empirical and theoretical contribution by foregrounding the socio-technical contexts of sharing and analyzing how sharing-based interventions may drive social change. Building on these insights, it also outlines ethical considerations for researchers and stakeholders.

Method: We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with participants in a regional public health intervention in Sweden. Interviews focused on participants' experiences of receiving personal health data and their reflections on sharing such data on social media. Analysis was guided by reflexive thematic analysis and informed by theoretical perspectives on the socio-technical embeddedness of health data and sharing practices.

Results: Participants understood health data as both personal and communal. Although many expressed discomfort with disclosing sensitive health information online, the peer-to-peer sharing model fostered a perceived moral obligation to share data for collective benefit.

Discussion: The tension between personal boundaries and perceived communal obligations raises important ethical concerns, particularly when individuals feel pressured to share data they would prefer to keep private. Our findings underscore the need for ethical frameworks that address social pressures, consent, and the emotional dimensions of data sharing. To support sustainable and ethical public health practices, further qualitative research is essential—particularly to understand how individuals navigate obligations and risks in technology-mediated care, and how these dynamics shape values such as autonomy, well-being, and collective responsibility.

The aim of this study was to identify the consequences related to ethical values in older people’s experiences of using medication-dispensing robots in Swedish home care services. The research material comprised 17 qualitative interviews with people aged 67–90 years. An assemblage perspective was used to analyze the material. The study results showed that medication-dispensing robots contributed to feelings of safety and continuity among older people but that robots could also limit feelings of autonomy for people with more outwardly oriented lifestyles. The introduction of robots changed roles and relations in eldercare, with older people having to actively add and compensate for perceived limitations in robot functionalities. To feel both safe and autonomous, older people had to “craft” ethics by putting different kinds of effort into everyday care involving medication-dispensing robots. In the study, ethics in home care came forth as a cocreational, ongoing, and precarious practice rather than a set of ethical principles embedded in robotic technology. Given that home care services for older people involve several key stakeholders, it would be of interest to identify and compare different perspectives of ethics and what potential benefits could come from using medication-dispensing robots in home care services.

While men frequently experience interpersonal violence, their help-seeking behaviors and experiences with support services remain understudied. Moreover, existing research has largely focused on male victims abused by an intimate partner, overlooking other types of close relationships, such as with family members and caregivers, that may be particularly salient from an intersectional perspective. This study examined variations in help-seeking patterns and social service support among male victims of interpersonal violence in Sweden depending on age, disability status, and migration background. To this end, we used register data on all male clients (N = 189) seeking support for interpersonal violence from the social services in 34 Swedish municipalities. Logistic and Poisson regression models were fitted to analyze intersectional differences in perpetrator characteristics, contact initiation, inter-organizational collaboration, and the type and amount of support received. Results showed that typically marginalized groups – old and young victims and victims with disabilities – were generally more often victimized by perpetrators other than a partner, more often referred to the social services by other organizations, received more support, and their cases resulted in more collaborations. This indicates that, among male victims of interpersonal violence, those victimized by family members or other close relations besides intimate partners are often the most vulnerable. Our findings highlight the importance of an encompassing understanding of interpersonal violence that includes multiple types of perpetrators, especially in the context of intersectional analyses. They also underline that interpersonal violence among men is often part of a broader web of social or health-related problems, and that organizational responses to male victims cannot be understood without taking this broader web into account.

The increasing size of the elderly population has been described as a major challenge for Western eldercare. In light of such demographic changes, welfare technology has been presented as a solution. It has been claimed, in both international and Swedish government policy, that digital technologies can improve how care is given and received. However, there is limited knowledge about what happens to articulations of care when national goals filter down to municipal local level where the actual care is practised. The aim of this article is to analyse how care and welfare technology are described in municipal strategy documents, and to discuss potential consequences of such articulations for everyday eldercare. A critical policy analysis, building on theories about articulation, was conducted on a selection of 19 policy documents (N = 19) from 18 municipalities. The key analytical results show that care tends to be articulated as an organizational matter and that care is transferred into the future of older people’s lives, through self-care and prevention. Interdependence, frailty and alternatives when welfare technology fails to create independence, are not brought up in the documents. Overall, such rearticulations of care indicate a more disembodied eldercare in the future.

Purpose: As sharing on social media has become an integrated part of everyday life, health and public health actors have started to show interest in the potential of people’s peer-to-peer sharing of health-related personal information (HRI) for health interventions. In this article we focus on how people make sense of sharing HRI on social media.

Methods: Twenty-two people between the ages 40 and 60 who had taken part in a regional health intervention were interviewed. Using theories about social media sharing, we explore their understandings and negotiations about whether, how much, and how to share HRI and discuss the results in relation to peer-to-peer sharing as a strategy in interventions.

Results: We identified three aspects that were perceived as particularly risky: loss of control, effects on identity, and affecting others negatively, along with strategies that were used to manage risks in practice: avoiding sharing, allocating, and embedding HRI.

Conclusions: By allocating and embedding HRI, people can unlock motivating affordances for health work. However, strategies to manage risks can also be counterproductive. For actors to provide equality in health promotion, initiatives that include social media sharing need to be mindful of the sometimes counterproductive effects this may have on people’s engagement.

While there has been an upsurge of research about human services for male victims of rape, methodological advances are still limited, and significant knowledge gaps remain. Until now, empirical studies have focused almost entirely on human service professionals’ gendered attitudes to try to explain outcomes and victims’ experiences of support. In this article, I argue that research approaches that are based on professionals’ attitudes fail to account for important contextual conditions in policing, healthcare and other human services. My overall aim is thus to introduce greater concern about contextual conditions in human services and provide ways for scholars to approach support for raped men so that different practices, as well as their effects, become visible. To demonstrate the contributions of a practice-based approach to research about support for raped men, an empirical case from a study on police investigation into rape will be analysed and discussed. By using a practice-based approach, it is possible to explore relations between practices performed by organisations, professionals and victims, and highlight the outcomes of such relations. In this way, a practice-based approach can help research progress and contribute to improved services for male rape victims.

The implementation of digital healthcare technologies—eHealth—is presented as a solution to increasing costs, demographic changes, and quality issues in rural healthcare. Employing the concept of affective atmospheres, this article uses interviews to explore the emotional aspects of digital healthcare among rural persons of advanced age. Our results suggest that participants were clearly influenced by an affective atmosphere that was deeply embedded in spatial imageries as well as in notions of old age. Strong feelings of resignation, necessity, low entitlement, and defiance tended to encourage participants’ wishes for local face-to-face healthcare to translate into viewing eHealth solutions as positive. This also meant that participants came to enact neoliberal identities of “active ageing”. In conclusion, the concept of affective atmospheres highlights how human subjects and digital materialities interact in the production of human emotional responses to digital healthcare technologies, and emphasises how the conditions and shared imageries of geographic space and age are active components in that process.