ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates how participation can be understood in service delivery contexts by applying a transactional perspective. It explores how three women experience participation across different life situations and their interface with different services within the health and welfare system. This is a case study of three in-depth interviews with women from three separate and original studies. The aim in all of the three original studies was to explore the concept of participation and/or interaction with welfare services. Two of the studies were approved by Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD), and one by the Regional Ethical Research Committee (REK). The main characteristic of active adaptation was to make decisions that appeared to be autonomous. The analysis showed that participation as adaptation to the service system with either active or passive participation might be strongly linked to how one presents oneself.
