| 1. |
- Wallander, Lisa, et al.
(författare)
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Fat Words or Useful Concepts? Consensus and Variation in Conceptions of Problematic Drinking in Contemporary Sweden
- 2019
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Ingår i: Contemporary Drug Problems. - : SAGE Publications. - 0091-4509 .- 2163-1808. ; 46:3, s. 241-264
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this study was to bring to light the meanings attributed to four concepts denoting problematic drinking—"alcoholism," "alcohol dependence," "alcohol misuse," and "risky drinking"—and to investigate whether individuals' preferences for using these concepts vary depending on their demographic characteristics, their stakeholder group membership, and their own drinking habits. These questions were examined by means of a vignette experiment, in which Swedish social workers, health care staff, journalists, researchers, and the general public (n = 863) read a series of 10 randomly constructed fictitious cases (vignettes; n = 8,630) and made judgments about which of the four concepts best portrayed the case descriptions. Results based on multilevel multinomial logistic regression showed that alcoholism was the concept chosen for the "heaviest" and most problematic drinking, whereas risky drinking was most often employed to describe moderate drinking habits that resulted in few negative consequences. The concepts alcohol misuse and alcohol dependence were positioned between alcoholism and risky drinking, and while misuse was linked to drinking large quantities and to more negative consequences, dependence was more frequently used to describe vignettes that involved depictions of craving. Moreover, the respondents' conceptual choices were affected by their own gender, age, drinking habits, and stakeholder group membership. Taken together, the study's findings reveal both consensus and variation in the respondents' choice of concepts, indicating that while these concepts may to some extent be employed for making meaningful distinctions between different types of problematic drinking, there is substantial variation in the way the concepts are employed.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Blomqvist, Jan, et al.
(författare)
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Vad är problemet? : Uppfattningar om alkoholens skadeverkningar
- 2017
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Ingår i: Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift. - 1104-1420 .- 2003-5624. ; 24:2, s. 149-164
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- I det följande visar vi att uppfattningarna om och definitionerna av alkoholvanor, som setts och ses som olämpliga eller avvikande, i själva verket är både motsägelsefulla och sinsemellan motstridiga, och att de har skiftat över tid och med sammanhang. Artikeln analyserar denna brist på samsyn och diskuterar vilka implikationer den kan tänkas ha för framtida forskning, praktik och policyöverväganden på området. Analysen är i huvudsak empirisk och deskriptiv, och vi har för enkelhetens skull avstått från att tillämpa exempelvis Benoits (2003) respektive Bacchis (2009) förvisso intressanta resonemang kring de berörda frågorna.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Sundqvist, Kristina, 1973-
(författare)
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Beyond Recreational Gambling : a Psychological Perspective on Risk- and Problem Gambling
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis was to examine risk gambling in the general population from a psychological perspective. This was done in three studies targeting personality, risky alcohol habits and gambling motives, respectively. Initially, 19 530 randomly assigned Swedish citizens were screened for problem gambling via telephone using the two questions in the Lie/Bet questionnaire. This sample constitutes the basis for one of the studies in the thesis. For the other studies, individuals answering yes to one of the questions in the Lie/Bet questionnaire and agreeing to participate further were sent a postal questionnaire. The questionnaire included questions about gambling, personality and gambling motives. Some of the main results showed that:Negative consequences of gambling were associated with higher levels of impulsivity and negative affectivity.Risk gamblers reported lower levels of negative affectivity compared to the general population.Compared to non-risk gamblers, twice as many of the risk gamblers reported weekly binge drinking during the past 12 months. This association, however, seemed to be explained by shared demographic characteristics, rather than by the risk gambling causing binge drinking.High risk gamblers more often reported that they gambled for the challenge and for coping reasons, compared to low risk gamblers.High risk gamblers had overall stronger motives for gambling.The results also indicated that the level of risk gambling was highly intertwined with gambling motives and could explain some differences in gambling motives between, for example, women/men and younger/older gamblers.One of the focal points in the discussion was that higher levels of negative affectivity may be a cause of elevated problems rather than a cause of risk gambling. Another issue discussed was that the level of risk- /problem gambling may be important to consider when comparing gambling motives across subgroups of gamblers.
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| 6. |
- Samuelsson, Eva, 1977-
(författare)
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Use or Misuse? : Addiction Care Practitioners’ Perceptions of Substance Use and Treatment
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis has been to study boundary-making in addiction care practitioner’s perceptions of substance use and treatment. The four papers are based on three data collections in Swedish outpatient addiction care: a) a survey conducted in 2006 (n=655), b) a factorial survey using randomly constructed vignettes conducted in 2011 (n=474), and c) a focus group interview study from 2013 (n=30) with a sample of the respondents from the factorial survey.The analyses show that practitioners tend to draw boundaries between various forms of substance use, with alcohol use being perceived as a less severe problem than narcotics use and requiring less extensive treatment measures. There are also partially varying perceptions in different parts of addiction care. By comparison with social services staff, regional healthcare staff generally see a greater need for treatment, recommend medical treatment to a greater extent, and display less confidence in the possibility of handling problematic use without professional treatment. Despite an ongoing medicalization at the policy level, psychosocial treatment interventions appear to have legitimacy in both regional healthcare and social services settings.Boundary-making processes are also found in relation to the specific user’s age, family situation, socio-economic status and in some cases gender, with young women’s drinking being seen as more severe than young men’s drinking for example. The boundary-making between different substance users may be interpreted as a sign of an approach based on a professional consideration of the person’s socially exposed situation, which might require more comprehensive support. At the same time, it may be an expression of a stereotyped approach, involving a normative evaluation of women’s behaviour as being more deviant than men’s, thereby having a limiting effect on the conduct norms that regulate women’s behaviour and making the problems of men invisible. To avoid disparities in addiction care delivery, it is of major importance that practitioners are given room to reflect upon the assumptions and values that underlie the assessments they make in practice. Combining a factorial survey with focus group interviews is proposed as one means of facilitating this type of reflection.
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| 7. |
- Blomqvist, Jan, 1946-, et al.
(författare)
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How should substance use problems be handled? : popular views in Sweden, Finland, and Canada
- 2014
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Ingår i: Drugs and Alcohol Today. - 1745-9265. ; 14:1, s. 19-30
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose – Although the way in which, for example, substance use problems are conceived and reacted to (by experts and treatment professionals but also by the environment), can have vast consequences for those directly or indirectly concerned, there is little systematic knowledge about how various preferred approaches differ between types of problems and sociocultural settings. In an ambition to at least partly mend this gap, this paper aims to compare how the general public in Sweden, Finland, and Canada appraise four generically different approaches to dealing with substance use problems, as these are applied to problem use of alcohol, cannabis, heroin, and cigarettes.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses data from three national surveys, aimed at uncovering how representative population samples from Sweden, Finland, and Canada perceive and understand the character of, and the proper way of handling, various addictive problems. Data from these surveys have been used to discern and operationalize four basic “models of helping and coping” as these have been outlined by Brickman et al. (1982). The analysis has aimed at investigating how the popular preferences for either of these models vary with type of addiction (to cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis, and other (“hard”) drugs, national setting, and potentially important respondent characteristics.Findings – The results point to large differences between the ways in which the general public understands the proper way of handling the four types of addiction, and shows, for example, that addiction to “hard” drugs is predominantly perceived as a matter for expert treatment, whereas smoking, or addiction to cigarettes, is more often perceived as a bad habit which the user is able to break on her/his own. In addition, the popularity of different handling models is found to vary between countries, and with personal characteristics such as gender, age, and substance use experiences.Originality/value – The study is one of few that have systematically tried to find out how various forms of substance use problems, or addiction, are conceived and reacted to in various national and social settings.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Johansson, Nils, et al.
(författare)
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Detection of Exterior Fires in Swedish School Buildings
- 2014
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Arson in school buildings is a big problem in Sweden. The most severe and costly fires start on the outside of the building. In one-storey building the fire can easily spread to the attic space through ventilation openings in the eaves. In this paper, research conducted in regard to detection of external fires in school buildings is presented. A maximum temperature linear detector, a differential linear heat detector and smoke detectors are studied and the performance of these are compared in the paper in regard to detection of external fires. The study is based on a full-scale experiment including 24 fire tests and the results are summaries in this paper. It is concluded in the paper that predicting and modelling detection of fires on the exterior of a building is very difficult, due to the influence of different weather conditions. This is something that designers that are looking at the functional performance of detection systems needs to be aware of.
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| 10. |
- Sohlberg, Tove, 1966-
(författare)
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Smoking cessation in Sweden - gender, pathways, and identity
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research on smoking has to a great deal been conducted within a public health or a medical context, or focused on policy making. Fewer studies have taken their point of departure in a social sciences context, and still fewer have analysed why individuals start and cease to smoke, and how and why smoking patterns on an aggregate level change over time and vary between different population groups.The aim of this dissertation is to analyse changes in the Swedish tobacco consumption with special emphasis at elucidating the decrease in smoking during the past half-century from different angels. Thus, the first paper explore if and how changes in smoking patterns can be understood and explained with reference to Sweden’s development as a welfare state, and in relation to socio-demographic and socio-economic circumstances. The second paper focuses on the long-term pathways to smoking cessation, by discerning several distinct trajectories from smoker to non-smoker. The third paper analyses gender differences with regard to reasons to smoke, experiences of smoking, and central elements in the cessation process. Finally, in the fourth paper, the issue of to what extent smoking cessation can be described as a process of identity change is explored. Smoking initiation and cessation vary by socio-demographic and socio-economic factors, and the rapid decrease in smoking has resulted in a rather vulnerable group of smokers in these aspects. The results also indicate that the cessation process is complex, with personal and structural factors interacting in the long-term process, leading to multiple pathways to a smoke-free life. Moreover, they point to gender differences in reasons to smoke and to quit, and in strategies to quit smoking. In addition, identity change seems to be important in remaining smoke-free. The stated inequality in gender and class points in the direction that structural changes and social policies might be of need to decrease smoking even further.
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