How 15- to 16-year-old Swedish adolescents experience social relationships and health-related behaviours: A qualitative study

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-536
Author(s):  
Ulrica Paulsson Do ◽  
Birgitta Edlund ◽  
Christina Stenhammar ◽  
Ragnar Westerling

Aims: Health-related behaviours are associated with social relationships. Adolescence is a time when healthy and unhealthy behaviours are established. There is a need to investigate adolescents’ views on how social relationships are related to health-related behaviours of adolescents in the Scandinavian welfare system. This study aimed to explore Swedish adolescents’ experiences and thoughts of how social relationships in different social environments are related to health-related behaviours. Methods: A total of 36 adolescents aged 15–16 years were interviewed in seven focus-group sessions. Qualitative content analysis was used for analysis of the transcribed interviews. Results: Two themes – social context and personal management – emerged. Swedish adolescents describe that their health-related behaviours as being partly shaped by their own personal management but mainly by the social contexts that surround them. Social contexts were expressed as playing a role in the adolescents’ health-related behaviours, as they provide fellowship, pressure, dependability and engagement. Fellowship with friends and family was expressed as providing healthy behaviours and high levels of well-being. Fellowship with friends was particularly important for physical activity. Close relationships were stated to influence health-related behaviours. Pressure from friends, teachers and social media were described as mainly influencing unhealthy behaviours and, to some extent, low levels of well-being. However, adolescents’ personal ability illustrated how adolescents shaped their own health-related behaviours. Conclusions: The study results contribute to the understanding of Swedish adolescents’ views on how social relationships can shape their health-related behaviours. The findings may be useful to school professionals in supporting adolescents to improve well-being and healthy behaviours.

Author(s):  
Catrin Heite ◽  
Veronika Magyar-Haas

Analogously to the works in the field of new social studies of childhood, this contribution deals with the concept of childhood as a social construction, in which children are considered as social actors in their own living environment, engaged in interpretive reproduction of the social. In this perspective the concept of agency is strongly stressed, and the vulnerability of children is not sufficiently taken into account. But in combining vulnerability and agency lies the possibility to consider the perspective of the subjects in the context of their social, political and cultural embeddedness. In this paper we show that what children say, what is important to them in general and for their well-being, is shaped by the care experiences within the family and by their social contexts. The argumentation for the intertwining of vulnerability and agency is exemplified by the expressions of an interviewed girl about her birth and by reference to philosophical concepts about birth and natality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 625-645
Author(s):  
Terri Peters

In architecture, the term resilience tends to be used narrowly describe a building’s structural and environmental performance in quantitative terms—but can a building be called resilient if it fails to make inspiring spaces for people, promote well-being, or improve people’s experience? The chapter begins by exploring how the term is currently evaluated in and around buildings, through discussion of related concepts such as sustainability, passive survivability, and performance gaps. The chapter traces the emergence of a new generation of building evaluation metrics and certification systems that are focused not solely on environmental performance but also consider synergies between people’s experience and our natural resources, such as Active House. The work of GXN and 3XN in Denmark are discussed, in relation to how their research explores resilience and sustainability by focusing on the social aspects of how buildings make people feel. Examples from the multifunctional, process-based strategies used in a series of new climate adaptation renovations in Copenhagen, Denmark, are discussed as exemplary resilient design projects that address neighborhood flooding by simultaneously improving the qualities of public spaces and better connecting people to nature. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how locally specific and socially focused designs can support more resilient environments for people.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Shivangi Nigam ◽  
Niranjana Soperna

Violence against women is linked to their disadvantaged position in the society. It is rooted in unequal power relationships between men and women in society and is a global problem which is not limited to a specific group of women in society. An adolescent girl’s life is often accustomed to the likelihood of violence, and acts of violence exert additional power over girls because the stigma of violence often attaches more to a girl than to the  perpetrator. The experience of violence is distressing at the individual emotional and physical level. The field of research and programmes for adolescent girls has traditionally focused on sexuality, reproductive health, and behaviour, neglecting the broader social issues that underpin adolescent girls’ human rights, overall development, health, and well-being. This paper is an endeavour to address the understated or disguised form of violence which the adolescent girls experience within the social contexts. The parameters exposed under this research had been ignored to a large extent when it comes to studying the dimension of violence under the social domain. Hence, the researchers attempted to explore this camouflaged form of violence and discovered some specific parameters such as: Diminished Self Worth and Esteem, Verbal Abuse, Menstruation Taboo and Social Rigidity, Negligence of Medical and Health Facilities and Complexion- A Prime Parameter for Judging Beauty. The study was conducted in the districts of Haryana (India) where personal interviews were taken from both urban and rural adolescent girls (aged 13 to 19 years) based on  a structured interview schedule. The results revealed that the adolescent girls, both in urban as well as rural areas were quite affected with the above mentioned issues. In urban areas, however, due to the higher literacy rate, which resulted in more rational thinking, the magnitude was comparatively smaller, but the difference was still negligible.  


A Child's Day ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Killian Mullan

This concluding chapter surveys the key findings and issues raised in the previous chapters. This study of a child's day provides the most extensive picture currently available in the UK, and elsewhere in the world, into how children's time use has changed over the past several decades. It identifies areas of expected change as well as other areas of surprising stability. It reveals how change and stability in children's time use blend together to comprise a child's day, uncovering also the multi-layered contexts of a child's day. Aspects of children's time use, and how this may have changed, will no doubt continue to surface in public debate in connection with their well-being. While welcoming this, it is necessary to always question and seek to understand how supposed changes actually fit within a child's day, the types of days where these changes are concentrated, among whom, and to seek out evidence on how such changes relate to other activities and the social contexts of daily life.


Author(s):  
Anne Sophie Bech Mikkelsen ◽  
Signe Petersen ◽  
Anne Cathrine Dragsted ◽  
Maria Kristiansen

Social relations are part of the complex set of factors affecting health and well-being in old age. This systematic review seeks to uncover whether social interventions have an effect on social and health-related measures among nursing home residents. The authors screened PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO for relevant peer-reviewed literature. Interventions were included if (1) they focused primarily on social relations or related terms such as loneliness, social support, social isolation, social network, or being involuntarily alone either as the base theory of the intervention or as an outcome measure of the intervention; (2) they were implemented at nursing homes (or similar setting); (3) they had a narrative activity as its core (as opposed to dancing, gardening or other physical activity); (4) their participants met either physically or nonphysically, ie, via video-conference or the like; and if (5) they targeted residents at a nursing home. The authors systematically appraised the quality of the final selection of studies using the Mixed Methods Assessments Tool (MMAT) version 2011 and did a qualitative synthesis of the final study selection. A total of 10 studies were included. Reminiscence therapy was the most common intervention. Studies also included video-conference, cognitive, and support group interventions. All studies found the social interventions brought about positive trends on either/or the social and health-related measures included. Despite limited and very diverse evidence, our systematic review indicated a positive social and health-related potential of social interventions for older people living in nursing homes or similar institutions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S213-S213
Author(s):  
Heather Fuller ◽  
Heather Fuller ◽  
Masahiro Toyama

Abstract Social support is well documented as promoting women’s well-being across the lifespan, yet implications vary depending on the source and type of support. The present study examined whether relationships with family, friends, and neighbors (both satisfaction with and number in social network) affected well-being over two years. Midwestern women (N=188, mean age = 80) were sampled from two waves of the Social Integration and Aging Study (2013, 2015). Hierarchical regression models indicated that satisfaction with friends predicted better life satisfaction, but satisfaction with family and neighbors did not predict well-being. In contrast, number of neighbors in social network predicted lower life satisfaction and greater stress, while number of family and friends were not associated with well-being. Moreover, differential effects emerged between older and younger women. Findings highlight unique facets of older women’s social relationships and suggest that future research and interventions addressing age and the source of support are warranted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-64
Author(s):  
Charlotte Silke ◽  
Bernadine Brady ◽  
Pat Dolan ◽  
Ciara Boylan

As youth civic engagement is widely considered important for social cohesion and democracy, concerns have been expressed regarding a perceived decline in civic and political engagement among young people throughout the western world. While research has shown that the social environment is influential in terms of the development of civic values, knowledge and behaviours among youth, limited research has been conducted on these issues in an Irish context. Drawing on survey research conducted with 167 young people aged 12–15 years in Irish secondary schools, this paper examines young people's civic attitudes and behaviours and how they are linked to their social contexts. Findings indicate that youth report high levels of social responsibility values but low engagement in both online and offline civic engagement. Furthermore, while parent, peer, school and/or community contexts were found to have a significant influence on youths' social responsibility values and offline civic behaviours, youth's online civic behaviours were not connected to these social environments. This study provides insights into the socialisation of civic values and behaviours among young people in Ireland and highlights the importance of investigating the link between the social context and different forms of youth civic involvement.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 791-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsty M. Patterson ◽  
Chris Clarke ◽  
Emma L. Wolverson ◽  
Esme D. Moniz-Cook

ABSTRACTBackground:Psychosocial models suggest that the lived experience of dementia is affected by interpersonal factors such as the ways in which others view, talk about, and behave toward the person with dementia. This review aimed to illuminate how informal, everyday interpersonal relationships are experienced by people with dementia within their social contexts.Method:A systematic review of qualitative literature published between 1989 and May 2016 was conducted, utilizing the electronic databases PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and CINAHL-Complete. This was followed by a critical interpretative synthesis to understand how people with dementia perceive the attitudes, views, and reactions of other people toward them, and the subjective impact that these have.Results:Four major themes were derived from the findings of the 23 included studies: being treated as an “other” rather than “one of us”; being treated as “lesser” rather than a full, valued member of society; the impact of others’ responses; and strategies to manage the responses of others. Thus, people with dementia can feel outcast and relegated, or indeed feel included and valued by others. These experiences impact upon emotional and psychological well-being, and are actively interpreted and managed by people with dementia.Conclusion:Experiences such as loss and diminishing identity have previously been understood as a direct result of dementia, with little consideration of interpersonal influences. This review notes that people with dementia actively engage with others, whose responses can foster or undermine social well-being. This dynamic relational aspect may contribute to emerging understandings of social health in dementia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 00145-2020
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Swigris ◽  
Katelyn Cutts ◽  
Natalia Male ◽  
Michael Baldwin ◽  
Klaus. B. Rohr ◽  
...  

The Living with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (L-IPF) questionnaire was developed with substantial input from patients with IPF to assess symptoms and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Because IPF is the prototypical chronic fibrosing interstitial lung disease (ILD) with a progressive phenotype, we expanded applicability of the L-IPF by deleting the word “idiopathic”, creating the L-PF (Living with Pulmonary Fibrosis) questionnaire, and then assessed its relevance among patients with progressive fibrosing ILDs in one-to-one interviews.Patients in the USA and Germany with any progressive fibrosing ILD other than IPF were asked about their disease and symptoms, completed the 44-item L-PF questionnaire (comprising two modules that assess symptoms and impacts of disease) and then answered a series of debriefing questions. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded for qualitative content analysis.Twenty patients were interviewed, but time constraints meant not all were asked about all items. The most frequent diagnoses were rheumatoid arthritis-associated ILD (25%) and mixed connective tissue disease-associated ILD (20%). Almost all patients endorsed the symptoms assessed by the L-PF: shortness of breath (19/20), cough (19/20 patients) and fatigue (18/20). Most patients endorsed impacts of progressive fibrosing ILD on activities of daily living, physical well-being, sleep, emotional well-being, and social aspects of their lives. Most patients had an overall positive impression of the Symptoms module and understood items as intended. All seven patients asked understood the items of the Impacts module.The L-PF contains concepts relevant and important to patients with progressive fibrosing ILD, and items are understood as intended.


2021 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-71
Author(s):  
Michał Jasny

Abstract Health, injury, and pain within the social contexts of sports remain relevant. Sociologists have repeatedly pointed out a set of factors that shape the sociocultural background of sports and aim to normalize the high risk of injury, pain, and negative impacts on health. The literature contains inspiring studies with valuable guidelines for conceptualizing this issue. Some researchers have focused on the social factors shaping athletes’ experiences with health-related risks and have proven that it is possible to oppose the deeply rooted “culture of risk.” The fact that most studies on the subject involve men’s sports increases the importance of those that address health-related risks in women’s sports. The literature includes few works concerning the sociocultural contexts of injury, pain, or health issues in handball. The aim of this study was to learn about the opinions and experiences of professional female handball players related to health in their discipline. Three main directions of research were followed: 1) health as a value; 2) significance of injury and pain; and 3) effect of health-related risks on a career in sports. The data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. The results do not reflect the opinions or experiences of the participants during the period of heightened epidemiological risk. The sample comprised female athletes (n=52) who participated in the Polish First League of women’s handball and represented the highest competitive level in their category in Poland.


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