Care leaver needs and accessibility: Findings from the first large‐scale project in Switzerland

Leaving out‐of‐home care is a challenging situation not only for young people leaving care but also for the child welfare system. However, systematic and multiorganizational transitional programmes are often lacking. This study investigated Switzerland's first large‐scale care leaver programme and analysed associations between care leavers' needs and contactability in a sample of 459 care leavers. A first track compared the characteristics of successfully contacted care leavers and of not contactable care leavers (‘dropouts’). The second track analysed the association between need for support and self‐rated or proxy‐rated quality of life in the subsample of 235 successfully contacted care leavers. Odds for indicators of lower educational attainment were substantially increased for dropouts. Additionally, self‐reported need for support was significantly associated with lower self‐ratings of quality of life in seven areas. Care leavers who accepted the programme's offer of coaching rated their quality of life lower than participants who reported no need for support and participants who reported a need for support but turned down coaching. For successfully contacted care leavers, the programme gave access to coaching sessions to the young people the most in need. However, dropouts appeared more vulnerable and might therefore benefit even more from aftercare support.     

Relational Family Therapy as an Aid Toward Resolving the Trauma of Sexual Abuse in Childhood in the Process of Separation in the Couple Relationship

Relational family therapy (RFT) is a psycho‐organic therapeutic approach that combines intrapsychic dynamics with interpersonal mechanisms and a systemic perspective. This integrative model is based on the assumption that the repetitive patterns of relationships in early childhood repeat in adulthood. It often happens that a sexually abused individual will later unconsciously be attracted to someone with whom they will relive the abusive atmosphere and dynamics from childhood. The purpose of this contribution is to present the RFT approach for dealing with sexual abuse. We will present a case study with individual segments from therapy with a woman, who previously had been sexually abused and was separated from her partner.     

The EU youth guarantee – a critical analysis of its implementation in Spain

The significant increase in youth unemployment in different parts of Europe caused by the economic crisis has led to the European Council Recommendation on Establishing a Youth Guarantee (2013). This Guarantee addresses the so-called ‘NEET’ (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) younger than 25 years of age and stipulates that employment, education or training shall be provided within a period of 4 months. As the initiative is relatively recent, in-depth analyses of its contents and implantation in the Member States are still missing. This paper analyses the European Recommendation and its implementation in Spain, evaluating its potential to improve the situation of the young people and society as a whole and its risks in provoking undesired side-effects. Our results question if the whole target group will be reached and highlight the measures’ low potential to promote a real and durable change. Increasing precariousness and insecurity and the tendency to only redistribute existing labour make it conceivable that the Guarantee may contribute to converting precariousness into a new labour paradigm for the whole population. The insufficient and retroactive funding of the Youth Guarantee can provoke negative side-effects for other social policies and the country's development. We conclude with several recommendations on how to improve the Youth Guarantee and its implementation.     

Die Wahrnehmung von Teamfähigkeit in Abhängigkeit von Wärme und Beitrag zur Gruppenleistung

The study focuses on the concept of team skills. Based on previous research that broke the concept down into sub-skills and documented no positive relationship between team skills and the performance of a group we measured the social perception of team skills. For this purpose four videos were produced that varied the factors contribution to group atmosphere and contribution to task performance of a single person. The team skills and all related sub-skills of this person were rated by external raters (n?=?136). The results clearly showed that the perception of team skills was based exclusively on the factor contribution to group atmosphere. Contribution to task performance, clearly recognized by raters, was not related to the perceived team skills and had a negative effect on the perceived ability to cooperate, the key element in the team skills concept. If the concept is highly appreciated in organisations as evident from various facts, diverting minority opinion will be avoided and group performance would depend largely on the majority decision. Other means to improve team effectiveness, such as group moderation techniques, need to be found.     

Information Sources as Explanatory Variables for the Belgian Health‐Related Risk Perception of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

The media play an important role in risk communication, providing information about accidents, both nearby and far away. Each media source has its own presentation style, which could influence how the audience perceives the presented risk. This study investigates the explanatory power of 12 information sources (traditional media, new media, social media, and interpersonal communication) for the perceived risk posed by radiation released from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant on respondents’ own health and that of the population in general. The analysis controlled for attitude toward nuclear energy, gender, education, satisfaction with the media coverage, and duration of attention paid to the coverage. The study uses a large empirical data set from a public opinion survey, which is representative for the Belgian population with respect to six sociodemographic variables. Results show that three information sources are significant regressors of perceived health‐related risk of the nuclear accident: television, interpersonal communication, and the category of miscellaneous online sources. More favorable attitudes toward nuclear power, longer attention to the coverage, and higher satisfaction with the provided information lead to lower risk perception. Taken together, the results suggest that the media can indeed have a modest influence on how the audience perceives a risk.     

Lebenspraxis Wissenschaft? Von der praktischen Sperrigkeit des Work-Life-Balance-Konzepts im wissenschaftlichen Feld

The concept of work-life-balance (WLB) aims to improve reconciling the areas of work and life, which are considered as structurally divided in society by sociology. This separation is actually discussed as blurring of boundaries between work and other areas of life. Building on this, the article addresses WLB in academia by following the approach of practice theories and discusses findings of an empirical study at an Austrian university. Referring to existing literature the analysis of qualitative interviews indicates that the idea of balancing academic work and life is contradicted by the constitutive logic in the academic field. The guiding image of a “life for academia” dominates the discourse on professional academic practice and private life, and centres work on research and on being present in the academic field as the actual life.     

On estimands and the analysis of adverse events in the presence of varying follow‐up times within the benefit assessment of therapies

The analysis of adverse events (AEs) is a key component in the assessment of a drug's safety profile. Inappropriate analysis methods may result in misleading conclusions about a therapy's safety and consequently its benefit‐risk ratio. The statistical analysis of AEs is complicated by the fact that the follow‐up times can vary between the patients included in a clinical trial. This paper takes as its focus the analysis of AE data in the presence of varying follow‐up times within the benefit assessment of therapeutic interventions. Instead of approaching this issue directly and solely from an analysis point of view, we first discuss what should be estimated in the context of safety data, leading to the concept of estimands. Although the current discussion on estimands is mainly related to efficacy evaluation, the concept is applicable to safety endpoints as well. Within the framework of estimands, we present statistical methods for analysing AEs with the focus being on the time to the occurrence of the first AE of a specific type. We give recommendations which estimators should be used for the estimands described. Furthermore, we state practical implications of the analysis of AEs in clinical trials and give an overview of examples across different indications. We also provide a review of current practices of health technology assessment (HTA) agencies with respect to the evaluation of safety data. Finally, we describe problems with meta‐analyses of AE data and sketch possible solutions.     

The Mirror to Our Soul? Comparisons of Spontaneous and Posed Vocal Expression of Emotion

It has been the subject of much debate in the study of vocal expression of emotions whether posed expressions (e.g., actor portrayals) are different from spontaneous expressions. In the present investigation, we assembled a new database consisting of 1877 voice clips from 23 datasets, and used it to systematically compare spontaneous and posed expressions across 3 experiments. Results showed that (a) spontaneous expressions were generally rated as more genuinely emotional than were posed expressions, even when controlling for differences in emotion intensity, (b) there were differences between the two stimulus types with regard to their acoustic characteristics, and (c) spontaneous expressions with a high emotion intensity conveyed discrete emotions to listeners to a similar degree as has previously been found for posed expressions, supporting a dose–response relationship between intensity of expression and discreteness in perceived emotions. Our conclusion is that there are reliable differences between spontaneous and posed expressions, though not necessarily in the ways commonly assumed. Implications for emotion theories and the use of emotion portrayals in studies of vocal expression are discussed.     

Subtypes of Problem Gamblers,Sociocultural Factors,and Availability of Gambling

Finnish treatment-seeking gamblers were examined in light of predominant problem gambler subtype models. “Psy science” oriented problem gambler subtypes were found to be considerably influenced by gambling cultures and treatment traditions in the countries from which the mainstream problem gambler research originates. Thus, models that emphasize the psychopathology of the individual might cause some friction when applied to countries like Finland with a quite particular gambling culture and addiction treatment system that traditionally functions on a social work basis. It is suggested that specialists helping problem gamblers should acquire local knowledge with which to complete psychiatrically oriented scientific knowledge.