1,720,965 research outputs found
Beatific and Horrific Futures–Substance Use According to Young Swedish Adults [Elektronisk resurs]
No full textSweden has a long tradition of restrictive policies regarding both legal (such as alcohol and cigarettes) and illegal substances (such as cannabis and amphetamine). However, research is needed on how regulatory frameworks and cultural understandings of substance use play out in the lives of young adults. Utilizing the logics of critical explanation framework, I explore the different logics that young Swedes draw upon when they conceptualize legal and illegal substance use. The data included 30 interviews with 21/22-year-olds who had previously participated in a prospective cohort study. The analysis shows that substance use played a minor role in the participants’ lives. Overall, it represented an obstacle to becoming an adult with a good life. They drew on social logics related to responsibility, ambition, and health to make sense of substance use, regardless of its legal status. These social logics have been used to explain previous years’ decreased use of cigarettes and alcohol among young people, and this study shows that they may also elucidate why illegal substance use is still rare in this group in Sweden. The analysis further suggests that these social logics were naturalized through the political logics of risk and choice, which emphasize the ideal of always being vigilant and safe. To dig deeper into this discourse, I uncover the emotional and ideological dimensions of the participants’ conceptualizations by discussing how they articulate beatific or horrific futures. The beatific future holds a promise of a bright, independent, and productive life, which includes abstaining from substances or using them moderately and responsibly. The horrific, in turn, holds that careless substance use will lead to social exclusion, addiction, and death. The participants’ hopes and fears strengthened the neoliberal idea that a good life is achieved through choice, vigilance, and by avoiding risk.</p
Conceptualizing adolescent substance use : A multi-substance and multi-method study
No full textThis dissertation focuses on key conceptualizations of adolescent substance use that are used in science, policy, and prevention to calibrate societal responses to related problems. It examines how such conceptualizations and other ways of providing meaning to both legal and illegal substance use function in explaining who these users are and how their use develops over time. The ambition is also to study how adolescents, upon reaching young adulthood, provide meaning to substance use and to what extent dominant conceptualizations are reflected in their lay discourse. The conceptualizations addressed include the Risk Factor Model, the Normalization Thesis, the Gateway Theory, and the discourse of neoliberalism. The dissertation consists of four studies that are based on quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data from the Futura01 cohort; a representative sample from the normal population of adolescents. The data cover three time points: survey data from 2017 (participants’ age: 15/16) and 2019 (age: 17/18), and interview data from 2022-23 (age: 21/22). Study I use regression analysis to explore the association between risk factors and substance use at two time points. Study II employs latent transition analysis to identify clusters of adolescent substance users and how adolescents transition between these clusters over time. Study III uses the Logics of Critical Explanation framework to examine how substance use, risk factors, and future prospects are understood by young adults in qualitative interviews. Finally, Study IV uses a narrative approach to explore how young adults understand their own transition out of adolescent substance use and into responsible adulthood. The studies jointly found support in the Swedish normal population for some of the above-mentioned conceptualizations, while others fell short. The Risk Factor Model and the Normalization Thesis could partially explain adolescent substance use. For instance, some micro-level risk factors were stable predictors of substance use as they could predict use of both legal and illegal substances, both in 9th and 11th grade. Others could predict use of certain substances or use at specific time points, or fail to predict at all. However, this dissertation found little support for the Gateway Theory. Although these conceptualizations are primarily utilized in quantitative research, they were prominently reflected in the participants’ lay discourse, as expressed during the research interviews. Furthermore, the participants primarily conceptualized substance use through neoliberal ideals such as individualism, moderation, and health. The use of both legal and illegal substances was understood as something enjoyable and, in part, as a practice associated with adolescence. However, participants believed that substances should not be used to the extent that they would jeopardize a successful transition into adulthood. For them, this stance was associated with a process of maturing out of substance use during their early 20s, as well as maintaining a permanent state of vigilance if they choose to try or use legal or illegal substances after this period in life. In correspondence with the setup of substance use prevention and policy in Sweden, the participants seemed to favor conceptualizations whose point of departure was individualism. The dissertation closes with a discussion about whether this far-reaching focus on substance use as individual choice risks obscuring alternative conceptualizations and societal responses that highlight the influence of structural factors on deviant behavior such as adolescent substance use
Conceptualizing adolescent substance use : A multi-substance and multi-method study
No full textThis dissertation focuses on key conceptualizations of adolescent substance use that are used in science, policy, and prevention to calibrate societal responses to related problems. It examines how such conceptualizations and other ways of providing meaning to both legal and illegal substance use function in explaining who these users are and how their use develops over time. The ambition is also to study how adolescents, upon reaching young adulthood, provide meaning to substance use and to what extent dominant conceptualizations are reflected in their lay discourse. The conceptualizations addressed include the Risk Factor Model, the Normalization Thesis, the Gateway Theory, and the discourse of neoliberalism. The dissertation consists of four studies that are based on quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data from the Futura01 cohort; a representative sample from the normal population of adolescents. The data cover three time points: survey data from 2017 (participants’ age: 15/16) and 2019 (age: 17/18), and interview data from 2022-23 (age: 21/22). Study I use regression analysis to explore the association between risk factors and substance use at two time points. Study II employs latent transition analysis to identify clusters of adolescent substance users and how adolescents transition between these clusters over time. Study III uses the Logics of Critical Explanation framework to examine how substance use, risk factors, and future prospects are understood by young adults in qualitative interviews. Finally, Study IV uses a narrative approach to explore how young adults understand their own transition out of adolescent substance use and into responsible adulthood. The studies jointly found support in the Swedish normal population for some of the above-mentioned conceptualizations, while others fell short. The Risk Factor Model and the Normalization Thesis could partially explain adolescent substance use. For instance, some micro-level risk factors were stable predictors of substance use as they could predict use of both legal and illegal substances, both in 9th and 11th grade. Others could predict use of certain substances or use at specific time points, or fail to predict at all. However, this dissertation found little support for the Gateway Theory. Although these conceptualizations are primarily utilized in quantitative research, they were prominently reflected in the participants’ lay discourse, as expressed during the research interviews. Furthermore, the participants primarily conceptualized substance use through neoliberal ideals such as individualism, moderation, and health. The use of both legal and illegal substances was understood as something enjoyable and, in part, as a practice associated with adolescence. However, participants believed that substances should not be used to the extent that they would jeopardize a successful transition into adulthood. For them, this stance was associated with a process of maturing out of substance use during their early 20s, as well as maintaining a permanent state of vigilance if they choose to try or use legal or illegal substances after this period in life. In correspondence with the setup of substance use prevention and policy in Sweden, the participants seemed to favor conceptualizations whose point of departure was individualism. The dissertation closes with a discussion about whether this far-reaching focus on substance use as individual choice risks obscuring alternative conceptualizations and societal responses that highlight the influence of structural factors on deviant behavior such as adolescent substance use
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Risk factors for substance use in Swedish adolescents: A study across substances and time points
No full textAim: The public health model for prevention of disease and disorder has been influential in informing interventions regarding substance use. While a number of risk factors within this model have been found to predict substance use, few studies have explored the associations across substances, at different time points and in the same individuals. The aim of this study was to test this model across legal and illegal substance use among adolescents, and to identify potential changes in associations over time. Methods: Data from two waves of a nationally representative cohort study among Swedish adolescents were used. Baseline data were collected in 2017 (9th grade) with a follow-up in 2019 (11th grade). Using modified Poisson regression analyses, we explored cross-sectional associations between factors from different domains and prevalence of cigarette use, binge-drinking and illegal drug use at both baseline and follow-up. Results: The results in part supported the public health model. Substance use was predicted by factors within the family, school and the individual/peer domain, but several associations were not statistically significant. The only consistent risk factors across substances and time points were lack of parental monitoring, truancy and minor criminal activities. Conclusion: Despite widely different prevalence rates across substances, some risk factors were consistently associated with adolescent substance use. Nonetheless, the findings challenge the assumption that risk factors are stable over adolescence. They suggest a need for flexible prevention interventions spanning across substances and legal boundaries of substances, but also over domains to reflect the heterogenous needs of adolescents
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