Trial lecture title: Promoting nurturance on a large-scale. Opportunities and challenges in policy making: agenda setting, formulation, implementation and evaluation.
Ordinary opponents
- First opponent: Professor Emeritus Willy-Tore Mørch, Department of Clinical Medicine, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
- Second opponent: Roberta Freitas Lemos, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, Virginia Tech, Fralin Biomedical Research, USA
- Leader of the evaluation committee: Associate Professor Børge Strømgren, Department of Behavioural Science, OsloMet
Leader of the public defense is Professor Svein Eikeseth, Department of Behavioural Science, OsloMet
The main supervisor is Professor Ingunn Sandaker, Department of Behavioural Science, OsloMet. The co-supervisor is Professor Anthony Biglan, PhD, Senior Scientist, Oregon Research Institute, USA.
Thesis summary
This thesis describes conceptual and empirical work aiming to increase the prevalence of nurturance in society.
In this thesis, the candidate explore the notion that the nurturing environments framework can be relevant to promote health and well-being for any population in any context. An important step in creating more nurturing societies is to develop reliable and useful ways to assess processes and outcomes related to nurturing environments. Ideally, this also helps clarify what nurturance entails in terms of behavior and contextual conditions and provides specific targets of change.
Study 1 describes the broad scientific basis for a cultural evolutionary view of nurturance based on an analysis of multiple sectors of society. Study 2 proposes the Nurture Consilience as a framework and coalition movement for increasing the prevalence of nurturing environments, providing examples and recommendations of actions in this direction.
Study 3 is a review of experimental evaluations of comprehensive multi-sector community interventions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, finding that experimental research in this area is largely non-existent. Study 4 uses the PAX Good Behavior Game as an example of a model that can promote nurturance in multiple sectors of society by illustrating how the PAX system’s integration of evidence-based kernels can be adapted to different settings.
Study 5 is a feasibility study on the use of a smartphone app to support the transfer of leadership skills from training program to everyday use, as an example of a potentially scalable and cost-effective tool to implement skills that promote nurturance.
Study 6 details the development of an instrument to assess nurturance in workgroups, and elaborates on how it can be used in other settings. The studies in this thesis provide an overview of the concept of nurturance, how it can benefit members of society, and adds to the knowledge on assessment and intervention to evolve nurturing societies.
