Focus of the first study in my doctoral thesis (dissertation Karolinska Institutet, May 2015) was a body awareness questionnaire. I used a method for cross-cultural adaptation of self-reporting measures. I initially translated a version of a body awareness questionnaire (into Swedish), and I also pretested the translated version. By using think-aloud interviews I measured the content validity. I also performed a psychometric evaluation of the Swedish translated version, trough confirmatory factor analysis (measure the construct validity).
Focus of the second study was pain and fatigue in persons with rheumatoid arthritis, and focus of the third study was fear-avoidance beliefs about physical activity in persons with rheumatoid arthritis. Studies two and three were crosssectional survey studies. In study two I used univariate analysis of variance and backwards stepwise multiple regression and in study three I used univariate analysis of variance and backwards stepwise logistic regression. Focus of the forth study was body awareness in persons with rheumatoid arthritis.
A phenomenological study design, using the Empirical Phenomenological Psychological (EPP) method was used. The purpose of choosing narrative interviews was that they can provide valuable information about the phenomenon (body awareness) from the patient’s perspective. The life world perspective includes the world in which we live and to which we ascribe meaning, which means that our experience is always subjective and relative. According to the method the researcher does not attempt to validate a hypothesis (nor does the researcher seek to prove theoretical constructions).