| 1. |
- Granvik Saminathen, Maria, 1983-
(författare)
-
Effective schools in a segregated landscape : Studies of academic achievement and psychological well-being among adolescents in Sweden
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Equitable educational opportunities necessitate equitable access to a favourable academic and social school environment. This thesis aims to explore the role of the school as an educational and social arena for the academic achievement and psychological well-being of lower secondary school students in Sweden. Using survey data, four empirical studies assessed contextual and compositional aspects of schools and their associations with adolescent outcomes.Study I examined the relevance of indicators of school effectiveness for student academic achievement. Teachers’ ratings of effectiveness indicators and student-reported marks in core subjects were shown to be lower in more sociodemographically disadvantaged schools compared to schools with a more privileged student body. However, even when adjusting for the school’s student intake and students’ own family backgrounds, students performed better, on average, in schools that were rated as more effective. School ethos was found to partly mediate the relationship between school student composition and academic achievement. Furthermore, analyses indicated that students attending one of the most socially deprived schools performed better when their school was rated as more effective, regardless of their own family backgrounds.Study II focused on school ethos, exploring the mediating effect of students’ academic achievement on the levels of internalising and externalising indicators of poor psychological well-being among students. Teacher-rated school ethos was found to be predictive of students’ academic achievement, even when taking the school’s sociodemographic student composition into account. Moreover, students’ levels of psychological distress were shown to be indirectly associated with the school’s ethos, via academic achievement. No such mediating relationship was identified for students’ levels of aggressive behaviour.Study III assessed the significance of the sociodemographic school environment for adolescents from socially disadvantaged residential areas in Stockholm. Students who chose to commute to more prestigious schools outside of their residential areas performed better academically compared to their peers who enrolled in one of their neighbourhood schools, an association that was partly mediated by teacher-rated school ethos. However, the commuting students reported lower school satisfaction and more psychological complaints than students who stayed behind, even when taking academic achievement and school ethos into account.Study IV investigated the implications of classroom immigrant density for adolescents in Sweden who were foreign-born and/or had parents who were foreign-born. Analyses found that students with an immigration background reported fewer psychological complaints when the proportion of immigrant students in their class was higher, an association that was partly mediated by the experience of classmate acceptance.This thesis has illustrated the importance of the functioning of schools for adolescents’ achievement and well-being, in line with school effectiveness theories. However, schools’ capacity to build an effective school context is closely linked with their student intake, undermining the school’s compensatory mission. Furthermore, the sociodemographic composition of schools can be essential for the psychological well-being of certain groups of adolescents, potentially counteracting the social mixing of students.
|
|
| 2. |
- Brolin Låftman, Sara, 1974-
(författare)
-
Children's Living Conditions : Studies on Health, Family and School
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present dissertation includes four empirical studies, each of which focuses on specific aspects of children’s living conditions. Study I analyses the association between young people’s social relations and health complaints using Swedish nationally representative survey data on 10- to 18-year-olds. Both relations with parents and with peers are associated with health complaints. Relational content is more strongly associated with health complaints than is relational structure. With regard to relational content, strained relations are more strongly associated with health complaints than are supportive relations. Study II investigates how effort and reward in school are associated with pupils’ subjective health using data from the Stockholm School Survey. Both effort and reward are shown to be positively associated with subjective health, and in particular pupils who report to put in high effort in school have high levels of subjective health. Contextual variation in health is found for girls but not for boys. Study III is based on Swedish register data and analyses the association between family type and choice of programme in upper secondary school. Children in single-mother households less often choose the natural science/technology (NT) programme compared with children who live with two original parents. Having a resident or a non-resident parent with NT skills is positively associated with choice of the NT programme. Study IV analyses the association between family type and social support, health, and material resources in 24 countries. The data are derived from the international Health Behaviour of School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. In a majority of the countries studied, children in single-mother households report smaller resources compared with children living with two original parents. No clear pattern is found with regard to differences between countries.
|
|
| 3. |
- Buli, Benti Geleta
(författare)
-
Mental health problems among adolescents in Sweden : Analysis of trends, developmental trajectories, and associated factors
- 2024
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate trends and trajectories of mental health problems and associated factors among adolescents in Sweden. The project consisted of four studies, with the first presenting trends and the subsequent ones exploring influencing factors. The first two studies used data from SALVe, repeated cross-sectional surveys from 2004 – 2020, while the third used national HBSC data from 2002 – 2018. Study IV was based on data from SALVe cohorts conducted among young people born in 1997 and 1999 where data were collected in four waves every three years from 2012 – 2021. Study I investigated trends in mental health problems among adolescents in Västmanland County, revealing an overall decrease but disparities based on socioeconomic status (SES) and sex. Higher SES was associated with reduced mental health problems, while lower SES showed an increase. Girls exhibited a more pronounced decrease in depressive symptoms and suicidal ideations than boys. Study II, using the same dataset, confirmed these trends and identified school-related factors influencing mental health problems, with improvements correlating with reduced problems in the high SES group. Study III found a significant increase in PSS over time, higher in girls, and linked to lifestyle factors, particularly alcohol drunkenness among high SES adolescents. Study IV focused on cohorts born in 1997 and 1999, exploring the impact of family and peer relationships on depressive and anxiety symptoms among young people.The results indicate that intermediary factors, including school-related factors, lifestyle choices, and social relationships, which vary across SES gradients, are linked to adolescent mental health problems. The associations between these intermediary factors and the mental health problems were, in most cases, influenced by a group of factors, including SES, sex, country of origin, and birth cohort, collectively named structural determinants. These determinants discriminated results between boys and girls, high SES and low SES, Nordic and non-Nordic origin, and the 1997 and 1999 cohorts. This underscores the need for at least two-tiered policy intervention. The first involves an immediate to mid-term response, targeting these intermediary factors with a special focus on the low SES group, girls, and young people with foreign backgrounds. The second entails a long-term policy intervention to narrow the divide.
|
|
