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Among policy makers and governments in the Global North, the voluntary sector is considered a central arena for immigrant integration. The aim of this interpretive synthesis was to systematically review research to understand immigrants' volunteering experiences and explore how volunteering may influence immigrants' health. A systematic literature review was performed using six databases. Eleven studies met our inclusion criteria. Meta-ethnography was applied for the interpretive synthesis. Immigrants' perceived volunteering contributed to improving self-conception, engaging in the community, developing skills and knowledge, and building social networks. Under certain conditions, volunteering could be an arena for developing meaningfulness and belongingness and capacity building in the new community for immigrants. Our study indicates that volunteering may have a health-promoting impact that may contribute to immigrants' sense of belonging and positive well-being. However, this effect seems complex, and volunteering activities and contexts must be further explored.

Standard (S,s) models of lumpy investment allow us to match many aspects of the micro data, but it is well known that the implied interest rate sensitivity of investment is unrealistically large. The monetary transmission mechanism is therefore a particularly clean experiment to assess the macroeconomic relevance of any investment theory. Our results show that lumpy investment can coexist with a realistic monetary transmission mechanism, but that we are nevertheless still a step away from a micro-founded theory of monetary policy.

Community-based occupational therapy is an increasingly important domain of work for occupational therapists. In Norway, this has been emphasized by the Coordination reform (2012), which assigned municipalities increased responsibility to protect and promote the health of their inhabitants. However, even if approximately 400 positions have been established between 2012 and 2017, little is known whether they have contributed to increased and/or more equal coverage across municipalities. To explore this matter, survey data was gathered among members of the Norwegian Occupational Therapy Association during 2017. Data was analyzed statistically (descriptive, comparative and associative) with SPSS 25. Results suggest large regional variations in the establishment of new positions. Moreover, most new positions were established in medium-sized municipalities that already had (an) occupational therapist(s) in the community. Number of prior positions, as well as being in the process of merging with another municipality were the only significant predictors for the establishment of new positions during regression analysis. Findings suggest that no levelling-out of geographical distributions of OT-coverage has occurred, even if new positions might have contributed to level-out workload (number-of-patients-per-therapist). Further, we discuss implications of our findings for policy-making and recruitment of Occupational Therapists for rural positions.

Background Knowledge of what is uplifting and helpful during pandemics could inform the design of sustainable pandemic recommendations in the future. We have explored individuals' views on helpful and uplifting aspects of everyday life during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods Participants answered a brief, daily survey via text messages during 14 consecutive days in July–August, 2020. The survey included the question: "During the past 24 hours, is there anything that has made you feel good or helped you in your life?" We used content analysis to compile responses from 693 participants, who provided 4,490 free-text answers, which resulted in 24 categories subsumed under 7 themes. Results Positive aspects during the COVID-19 pandemic primarily related to social interactions, in real life or digitally, with family, friends and others. Other important aspects concerning work, colleagues and maintaining everyday life routines. One theme concerning vacations, going on excursions and being in nature. Leisure and recreation activities, such as hobbies and physical exercise, also emerged as important, as did health-related factors. Bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings and activities that benefited well-being were mentioned frequently. Lastly, people commented on the government strategies for containing COVID-19, and whether to comply with restrictions. Conclusions To summarize, daily uplifts and helpful aspects of everyday life centered around social relationships. To comply with recommendations on physical distancing, people found creative ways to maintain social connections both digitally and face-to-face. Social interaction, maintenance of everyday life routines, hobbies and physical activity appeared to be important for well-being.

Background: Fatigue is a common symptom associated with a wide range of diseases and needs to be more thoroughly studied. To minimise patient burden and to enhance response rates in research studies, patientreported outcome measures (PROM) need to be as short as possible, without sacrificing reliability and validity. It is also important to have a generic measure that can be used for comparisons across different patient populations. Thus, the aim of this secondary analysis was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Norwegian 5-item version of the Lee Fatigue Scale (LFS) in two distinct patient populations. Methods: The sample was obtained from two different Norwegian studies and included patients 4–6weeks after stroke (n =322) and patients with osteoarthritis on a waiting list for total knee arthroplasty (n =203). Fatigue severity was rated by five items from the Norwegian version of the LFS, rating each item on a numeric rating scale from 1 to 10. Rasch analysis was used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the 5-item scale across the two patient samples. Results: Three of the five LFS items ("tired", "fatigued" and "worn out") showed acceptable internal scale validity as they met the set criterion for goodness-of-fit after removal of two items with unacceptable goodness-of-fit to the Rasch model. The 3-item LFS explained 81.6% of the variance, demonstrated acceptable unidimensionality, could separate the fatigue responses into three distinct severity groups and had no differential functioning with regard to disease group. The 3-item version of the LFS had a higher separation index and better internal consistency reliability than the 5-item version. Conclusions: A 3-item version of the LFS demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties in two distinct samples of patients, suggesting it may be useful as a brief generic measure of fatigue severity. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT02338869; registered 10/04/2014 (stroke study). ; The stroke study was supported by a grant from the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (grant #2013086), a grant from the Extra Foundation (grant # 2015/FO13753), and funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-COFUND) under grant agreement #609020 - Scientia Fellows. The University of Oslo, Oslo University Hospital, and the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences have provided research time, administrative and organizational support and additional funding for the stroke study. The osteoarthritis study was funded by Lovisenberg Diaconal Hospital, the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation and the Norwegian Nurses Organization. Anners Lerdal received funding from the Norwegian Research Council of Norway (grant #287816). The postdoctoral fellowship for Maren. F. Lindberg was funded by the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (grant #2018060). The Norwegian non-profit National Association for Public Health's doctoral scholarship funds Ingrid Johansen Skogestad. The funding source had no involvement in conducting and reporting of this study. ; publishedVersion