Observed successful collaboration in social work practice: coherent triads in Swedish juvenile care

The purpose of this study is to analyse observed situations of successful cooperation, even if it unfolds during shorter interaction sequences. The aim is to analyse how and when the actors within juvenile care in Sweden present successful cooperation, and which interactive patterns are involved in the construction of this phenomenon. Forming the empirical basis for this study are 119 field observations of organised meetings and informal meetings before and after organised meetings, during visits to youth care institutions in Sweden, social services offices, and the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care. In this study, markers are used to define successful cooperation in the empirical material, so that actors who belong to at least three different categories will be identified (coherent triad). The professional actors can also shape a coherent triad with young people or parents in cases where past conflicts arise. When some professionals create a distance from other professional partners, conflicts can be erased so as to generate new conditions for coherence of the triad. Construction and reconstruction of collaboration success is an ongoing, interactive process. Presentation of the proper interaction moral is created and re-created during interactions and appears in the myriad of everyday interactions.     

Does Asking Adolescents About Pornography Make Them Use It? A Test of the Question–Behavior Effect

Longitudinal survey design is the preferred method for the robust assessment of outcomes associated with socially undesirable or potentially harmful sexual behaviors. However, repeated measurement may induce the question–behavior effect (QBE)—the phenomenon where asking about a behavior changes the probability of engaging in the behavior in the future. Using an online panel sample of Croatian adolescents (M_{age at baseline} = 15.8, SD = .50), the present study explored the QBE in the context of adolescent pornography use. To this end we compared the frequency of pornography use six months after the initial survey (T2) between adolescents who participated in both baseline (T1) and T2 survey assessments (n = 1,053; 41% of males) and those who began the study at T2 (n = 130; 42% of males). In line with the findings from a recent Dutch study, we found no evidence that surveying adolescent pornography consumption increased participants’ reports of subsequent use. Implications of the findings for studying pornography use in young people are discussed.     

Associations between Croatian Adolescents’ Use of Sexually Explicit Material and Risky Sexual Behavior: A Latent Growth Curve Modeling Approach

Objectives: The aim of this biobehavioral longitudinal study was to assess the association between sexually explicit material (SEM) use and risky sexual behavior among Croatian adolescents (n?=?577). Methods: The data were collected over the period of 15?months. Conditional dual-domain latent growth modeling was used. Results: Male adolescents’ initial SEM use, but not subsequent growth, was related to changes in sexual risk taking over the observed period. Among female adolescents, SEM use and sexual risk taking were significantly related only at baseline. Conclusions: Our findings point to gender-specific association between adolescents’ SEM use and risky sexual behavior.     

A NOTE ON MULTIVARIATE LOGISTIC MODELS FOR CONTINGENCY TABLES

The log-linear model is a tool widely accepted for modelling discrete data given in a contingency table. Although its parameters reflect the interaction structure in the joint distribution of all variables, it does not give information about structures appearing in the margins of the table. This is in contrast to multivariate logistic parameters, recently introduced by Glonek & McCullagh (1995), which have as parameters the highest order log odds ratios derived from the joint table and from each marginal table. Glonek & McCullagh give the link between the cell probabilities and the multivariate logistic parameters, in an algebraic fashion. The present paper focuses on this link, showing that it is derived by general parameter transformations in exponential families. In particular, the connection between the natural, the expectation and the mixed parameterization in exponential families (Barndorff-Nielsen, 1978) is used; this also yields the derivatives of the likelihood equation and shows properties of the Fisher matrix. The paper emphasises the analysis of independence hypotheses in margins of a contingency table.