Elinor Brunnberg

Adolescent Girls’ and Boys’ Perceptions of Mental Health

The aims of this study are to analyse the concept of mental health from the perspective of adolescent girls and boys and to describe what adolescent girls and boys regard as important determinants of mental health. Interviews with 48 children, 13 and 16 years old, in Sweden were held individually or in focus groups. The adolescents perceived mental health as an emotional experience, where positive as well as negative health is part of the concept. Family is the most important determinant for young peoples mental health, closely followed by friends. Neither girls nor boys believed that there were any large differences in mental health between girls and boys. Age differences seemed to be more important than gender in the perception of mental health by children.

Tinnitus and hearing loss in 15-16-year-old students: Mental health symptoms, substance use, and exposure in school

The current study assessed the responses from a survey titled ‘Life and Health – Young People 2005’, completed by 2878 15–16-year-old adolescents in mainstream schools in the county of Örebro, Sweden. Thirty-nine percent of students with hearing loss (slight, mild, or moderate) and 6% of students with normal hearing reported tinnitus often or always during the past three months. Almost no gender difference was observed among students with normal-hearing reporting tinnitus (boys 6.3%, girls 5.6%); however, a gender difference was noticed among hard-of-hearing (HH) students (boys 50%, girls 28%). Adolescents with both hearing loss and tinnitus reported considerably higher scores for mental health symptoms, substance use, and school problems than other students. Anxiety in the past three months, male gender, and alcohol consumption in the past year were associated with tinnitus in HH students; irritation and anxiety in the past three months, disability, use of illicit drugs, and truancy predicted tinnitus in the normal-hearing group. Consequently, students with a hearing loss and tinnitus are at high risk and should be monitored for subsequent problems.

Young people as partners in research: experiences from an interactive research circle with adolescent girls:

This article presents an interactive research methodology for young people’s participation in research. A model of the research circle, based on the Scandinavian study-circle tradition with democratic ideals, was created and is described. The empirical example is from Sweden. Academic researchers invited young people to be research partners in a research circle. The asymmetrical relationship between the researchers and the young research partners made asymmetric responsibility and respect into central parts of the methodology. The interactive process in the research circle concerns research fundamentals: developing methodological knowledge, designing a study, how to formulate the research questions from the viewpoint of young people, how to analyze from a generational insider perspective, and how to handle institutionalized and asymmetric power relations in social knowledge formation.

The School Playground as a Meeting Place for Hard of Hearing Children

The schoolyard is the main social arena for children attending classes for hard of hearing pupils, to meet and mix with other children. Their social interplay with other children is rather restrict ...

Hard-of-hearing children's sense of identity and belonging

This study explores the process of identity construction for hard-of-hearing (HH) children in Sweden. Twenty-nine children aged 9–16 years who attended special classes for HH students were interviewed. During this longitudinal study, all classes were moved from an oral to a signing school environment. The findings support the position that a bilingual HH identity exists. HH children often construct their identity by widening their reference group to include not just HH but also those who are ‘almost the same’. They can have a sense of belonging either to deaf or hearing children, or both. In the development of identity HH children make distinctions between subgroups within their reference group. There were also children in crisis or with an unclear identity. This needs to be further explored to determine if the crisis is a productive part of identity construction or a problem requiring support. Gender construction also needs to be further explored.

Methodological Challenges in Developing a Youth Questionnaire, Life & Health Young People, for Comparative Studies in Thailand and Sweden: About Bridging the Language Gap Between Two Non-English-Speaking Countries.

Purpose: To develop a Thai questionnaire ชีวิตและสุขภาพของวัยรุ่นในประเทศไทย (TYQ) to explore girls’ and boys’ living conditions, lifestyles, and self-reported health with special focus on sexuality, based on a Swedish questionnaire, Liv & Hälsa ung (SYQ). Challenges in developing a youth questionnaire for comparative studies are described. Design: A multistep translation, sociocultural adaptation procedure, and a mixed-method validation test were performed using English as a common language within the research group. Three versions of SYQ were used as a pool of questions to develop the questionnaire. Findings: From a field test, unclear questions were identified and minor adjustments made. Life & Health Young People in a Thai version was successfully developed. The English version was used to bridge the language gap. Conclusion: This unique multistep methodology, including mixed-method validation procedure, can be used by researchers in countries where English is not the main language.