Transitions to Adulthood of ‘At Risk’ Young Men: New Analysis from Two Norwegian Qualitative Longitudinal Studies

This paper focuses on two cohorts of Norwegian young men whose behaviour in childhood and adolescence caused serious concern to their parents, teachers, social workers and, in some cases, the police, Despite having been identified as ‘at risk’, they made transitions to positive adult masculine identities in two different historical contexts; the 1980s and 2000s. The paper analyses the difference that historical context makes to these young men’s lives, their gendered identity work and their perspectives on their past, present and future. In particular, it identifies the ways in which supportive intergenerational relationships and significant others serve to produce positive turning points and, over time, help the young men to develop resilience and potentially happy and successful futures.     

EXCLUSION AND REINTEGRATION IN A SOCIAL DILEMMA

Using a social dilemma game, we study the cooperative behavior of individuals who reintegrate their group after being excluded by their peers. We manipulate the length of exclusion and whether this length is imposed exogenously or results from a vote. We show that people are willing to exclude the least cooperators and they punish more, and more severely, chronic defections. In return, a longer exclusion has a higher disciplining effect on cooperation after reintegration, but only when the length of exclusion is not chosen by group members. Its relative disciplining effect on cooperation after reintegration is smaller when the length of exclusion results from a vote. In this environment, a quicker reintegration also limits retaliation. The difference in the impact of long versus short exclusion on retaliation is larger when the length of exclusion is chosen by group members than when it is exogenous. Post-reintegration cooperation and forgiveness depend not only on the length of exclusion but also on the perceived intentions of others when they punish. (JEL C92, H41, D23)     

Difficult differences pave the creative road from diversity to performance

In this article, we argue that engagement with differences is important for the relationship between diversity and organizational performance. This importance is explained by the increased potential for creativity and innovation coming out of working in diverse teams. We recognize that difference and diversity can act as a double-edged sword for creativity and also contend that such differences are a fundamental condition for novelty and value to emerge. It is because of differences and not despite them that we create at individual, group, and organizational levels and a European approach to this topic – given Europe's history and philosophical traditions – recognizes the major role played of creative tensions and even conflict in innovation and in society more broadly. In this paper, we review literature that relates creativity and business performance, creativity, and diversity and examine the role of disagreement and tension, both conceptually and based on empirical evidence. We conclude by stressing the point that creativity often comes out of difficult differences, a European lesson that is easily forgotten, in Europe as well as globally.     

An Analysis of Specific Life Satisfaction Domains and Disordered Eating among College Students

Research has revealed that overall life satisfaction (LS) is negatively related to disordered eating. This study examined whether specific LS domains (e.g., family, friends, etc.) were more strongly associated with eating behaviors/weight perceptions (e.g., exercising to lose weight, using laxatives to lose weight, etc.) in 723 randomly selected college students analyzed separately by gender. Data were analyzed using logistic and multiple regression procedures. Results supported the hypotheses in the expected directions. College students’ weight perceptions had the strongest relationships with Satisfaction with Self and Satisfaction with Physical Appearance, and these relationships were stronger among females than males. Worrying about weight, self-described weight, and binge eating were significantly correlated with all LS domains (p < .05). Results suggest potential contributions of differentiating among the domains of LS in efforts to understand disordered eating among males and female college students. Implications for practice are discussed briefly.     

Marital Status,Gender, and Parents’ Psychological Well‐Being*

This study analyzes the associations between marital status, gender, and depressive symptoms among parents. The regression results indicate that married parents report fewer traditional depressive symptoms and lower rates of alcohol abuse than do single parents. Mothers and fathers also appear to be more likely to exhibit different depressive symptoms: Mothers are more likely than fathers to report traditional depressive symptoms and fathers are more likely to report the abuse of alcohol. Finally, we find evidence that indicators of parenting burdens such as economic strain, household labor, childcare, social support, and religious involvement mediate and moderate these relationships.     

Impression management in the market for residential care for children and youth in Sweden

In what has become quite a turbulent quasi‐market for residential care for children and youth, providers now compete for public contracts. To create visibility and attract customers, many providers use marketing activities to project the desired impression of themselves to maintain or strengthen their market position. In this article, we analyse how companies that provide residential care for children manage the impressions they project on their websites and in advertisements. The results reveal that residential care providers use a range of impression management strategies to enhance their organizational image and to respond to potentially damaging or threatening images. The information providers choose to disclose leaves customers—in this case, the social workers responsible for choosing and purchasing care on behalf of clients—with rather limited opportunities to evaluate the quality of care. This is a significant problem considering other, more reliable, sources of information are difficult to access.     

Prevalence and correlates of problematic gambling among Danish adolescents

This study reports the findings from a national survey on gambling behaviour among Danish primary school children. A questionnaire was administered to 2,223 primary school students ranging in age from 11 to 17 years. The questionnaire contained a gambling screen (SOGS‐RA) and items that measure gambling behaviour, social network and cognitive perceptions. The prevalence of problem gambling was 1.29 per cent, while 4.5 per cent were categorised as at‐risk gamblers. The three most frequently reported reasons for gambling were to win money, to have fun and to socialise with family and friends. It is suggested that gambling may be linked to a masculine universe and that at‐risk gambling behaviour patterns may be part of a normal adolescent life in which gambling serves recreational or leisure purposes. Implications for further research and preventive measures are discussed.     

How Far Have We Come? An Updated Scoping Review of Young Carers in the U.S.

Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal - Approximately 1.4 million young carers (aged 8–18) in the United States are providing multifaceted, extended care to adults with serious illness, in...     

Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18–⁠20-month-old toddlers

The present study explores the viability of using tablets in assessing early word comprehension by means of a two-alternative forced-choice task. Forty-nine 18–20-month-old Norwegian toddlers performed a touch-based word recognition task, in which they were prompted to identify the labeled target out of two displayed items on a touchscreen tablet. In each trial, the distractor item was either semantically related (e.g., dog–cat) or unrelated (e.g., dog–airplane) to the target. Our results show that toddlers as young as 18 months can engage meaningfully with a tablet-based assessment, with minimal verbal instruction and child–administrator interaction. Toddlers performed better in the semantically unrelated condition than in the related condition, suggesting that their word representations are still semantically coarse at this age. Furthermore, parental reports of comprehension, using the Norwegian version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories, predicted toddlers’ performance, with parent–child agreement stronger in the semantically unrelated condition, indicating that parents declare a word to be known by their child if it is understood at a coarse representational level. This study provides among the earliest evidence that remote data collection in 18-20 month-old toddlers is viable, as comparable results were observed from both in-laboratory and online administration of the touchscreen recognition task.