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Young People in theSwedish Social WelfareSystemAke W. Edfeldt a & Sture Miitzell ba Department of Education , StockholmUniversity , S-10691 , Stockholm , Swedenb Department of Family Medicine , UppsalaUniversity , S-75185 , Uppsala , SwedenPublished online: 27 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Ake W. Edfeldt & Sture Miitzell (1995) Young People inthe Swedish Social Welfare System, International Journal of Adolescence andYouth, 6:1, 37-45, DOI: 10.1080/02673843.1995.9747777

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International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 1995, Volume 6, pp. 37-45 0267-3843/95 $10 © 1995 A B Academic Publishers Printed in Great Britain

Young People in the Swedish Social Welfare System

Ake W. Edfeldt* and Sture Miitzell**

*Department of Education, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden **Department of Family Medicine, Uppsala University, S-75185 Uppsala, Sweden

ABSTRACT

One fruitful interdisciplinary approach to counteracting alcohol and drug abuse as well as acts of violence by teenagers comprises sequential application of social and natural sciences in full accordance with their respective underlying meta theories.

Using this approach we have found that as a rule children's use of alcoholic beverages and/ or violent acting out starts as attempts to behave as grown-ups in situations where they lack trustful contacts with their parents or other manifest adults, i.e. adults who-in their contacts with their own children as well as others-act as responsible adults and in every situation stand up for their opinions and act accordingly. This also means, however, that in specific situations they are able to change their rules in accordance with the circumstances. But the really responsible adult not only does this but can also mentally afford to do so in consultation with the child or adolescent concerned.

This is the only way for children and adolescents to learn to know the adult world as a supportilzg and at the same time a controlling system.

Family intervention is thus recommended as a result of this study.

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In the middle of the 20th century, i.e. during the period of serious positivistic endeavour within the social sciences, nobody really objected to-or even questioned the correctitude of-the social scientist's attempts generally to find and explain the same kind of cause and effect relationships in his or her material as the natural scientist as a rule managed to demonstrate. This was part and parcel of the very procedure of proving the existence of

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behavioural invariances, which procedure in tum was looked upon as the core purpose of all scientific activity. Deductive efforts were looked upon as more truly scientific than inductive ones. Thus, the aim to prove was generally more professionally renumerative than the aim to discover. The most well-known opponents of this tendency were-as we all know-the two American sociologists, Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss (1967).

In their monography, they outlined new strategies for qualitative research in sociology, thereby trying to inspire social scientists to take a new interest in the inductive approach.

Even then, however, it was obvious that theirs was not a proper inductive procedure, since Glaser and Strauss were not restricted to a present empirical material in their search for suitable classification criteria. Any other known state of things which they happened to think of in this respect was tested as such a criterion. These theoretical errors have recently been made even more obvious in the four volumes in which Glaser and Strauss have separately tried to show the theoretical shortcomings of their former coauthor (Strauss and Corbin, 1990; Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1992, 1993). This said, let us try to find a way to show how a properly used inductive procedure might help us to perform adequate scientific work in the social sciences. As an

lnducti ve procedure

Empirical generalizations

~ Theories

In vitro-· tests

Deductive procedure

Hypotheses

) In vivo tests

Roality ..,/

FIGURE 1. The modified Wallace model.

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instrument to accomplish this, we might try a modified model first used by Walder L. Wallace in his The Logic of Science in Sociology, Chicago 1971 (Wallace, 1971).

Since the deductive procedure presupposes reasoning according to the formula if so-so necessarily so! the most typical relationship between a theoretical assumption and an observed phenomenon is the natural scientific law of cause and effect. Furthermore the related intersubjectivity must be absolute. Anybody who reads a deductive statement must him- or herself be able to come up with the same results, provided he or she repeats the indicated experimental procedure properly.

During the positivistic heydays these were the two basic requirements related to all scientific activity-including the social sciences. But today the situation is quite different.

To us the above stated scientific prerequisites are consistent with only one of the two possible meta-theories which govern a scientist's endeavours. Let us comment on these two meta­theories as we step by step, though rather quickly, compare a scientist's working procedure according to one or the other (von Wright, 1971).

The natural scientist's approach implies a general wish to explain nomothetic states or circumstances, as a rule of cause and effect character. The social scientist, on the other hand, tries as a rule to understand what means human beings use to attain specific ends or what different ends an observed specific action might be supposed to lead to.

The understanding of idiographic states or circumstances, generally of means to an end character, can never be described under the rigid demands of an absolute intersubjectivity. This is where the need for a differently functioning intersubjectivity has made itself felt. Thus the conditional intersubjectivity has been suggested to the social scientists working inductively (Edfeldt and Janson, 1995). Here the fundamental condition consists of the demands on the reporting social scientist to give an absolutely comprehensive description of the empirical material, the basic classifications and the resulting empirical generalisations.

Furthermore, the researcher must also describe the next step in every effort to generate tentatively produced theories, i.e. the phase in which generalisations are paired conceptually. This is the only way in which the social scientist might continue his or her inductive search for answers to all possible questions "why" those generalisations exist together in the empirical material at hand. Now is the time when the social scientist, e.g. the psychologist, economist or political scientist, should keep a sharp

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look-out for possible answers of means to an end character. Our own research has made it obvious that this is also the case in connection with interdisciplinary problems in behavioural sciences and medicine like alcohol and/or drug abuse. We are now able to give the completed form of Figure 1.

Inductive procedure Means to an end Understanding Conditional intersubjectivity ~

~ (/// i Empirical generalizations

Reality

FIGURE 2. The final modification of figure 1.

Deductive procedure Cause and effect Explanation Absolute intersubjectivity

Hypotheses

If the social scientist has fulfilled the demands faithfully to mark his mental path and a reader/reviewer cannot find any logical errors or mistakes as regards the contents, then this reader I reviewer has to accept the results given until, for example based on another material, he or she is able to contradict or even refute the statements in question. This is the general significance of the conditional intersubjectivity, which thus is founded on the prerequisite that the author's analyses and reasoning are possible to trace and translate into intelligible descriptions.

If this is not possible, which rather often is the case, e.g. in studies of existential matters, a third kind of intersubjectivity has been suggested, i.e. intuitive intersubjectivity. Its close relation to the concept of tacit knowledge is obvious and thus it makes itself perceptible only as a result of a professional individual's prolonged activity within a certain object field.

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APPLICATION IN A MEDICAL FIELD STUDY

Introduction

During the autumn of 1994 we have performed, on behalf of the County of Stockholm Northeastern District Health Services (NOSO), a qualitative study of children's and adolescents' (11-19 years) situation in suburbs of the relatively well-to-do kind that dominate in the NOSO administrative area.

Our assignment was to produce a basis for planning primary preventive public health work. The study took the form of in­depth interviews with young people and their parents, teachers and various people with specialist knowledge of young people's situation in the municipality chosen, which, after consultations within NOSO, was Taby, a Stockholm suburb with 58700 inhabitants.

The field-work comprised in-depth interviews of the sequential type. These interviews have been supplemented with group discussions (focus groups) concerning interactive elements in the young people's lives. All interviews, taped in extenso, have been conducted and interpreted by qualified clinical psychologists.

Although the original NOSO initiative derives from a desire to fulfil commitments regarding primary preventive public health work in an adequate manner, it is inevitable that the current debate in the media concerning the increasing drunkenness and violence among young people in Sweden makes the study as such, as well as the results obtained, highly topical.

Methodological considerations

The proximity to medical science should normally mean that people working in the primary preventive public health field endeavour to find signs of causal associations in the community that may be assumed to be related to physical or mental illness or insufficiency (Mi.itzell, 1988). It is in this context, however, that the broad contacts in recent years between medical science and the social sciences-above all the behavioural sciences-have provided increased opportunities for fruitful research; cf. e.g. (Mi.itzell, 1994). The qualitative Taby study of young people's lives in Stockholm suburbs is another study in accordance with the above requirements. The material upon which the Taby study is based comprised a strategic sample of young people and adults.

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Note the fundamental difference in sampling procedure between strategic selections and representative random selections! Furthermore, the material does not include young people with a criminal record; none of them had been convicted of theft, crimes of violence or drug offences. In other words, the material comprises ordinary youngsters from homes with a rather good socio-economic situation that is typical of the Taby community.

Since the credibility of a qualitative study is dependent upon descriptions in the natural language of the original material, a summary of the results of a qualitative study in the true sense can never be given. Only the original report can give a complete picture of the implications of the material. For the present specific purpose, however, the main results of the study will be described in this context.

RESULTS

From the beginning of secondary school a tendency for schoolchildren to consciously adopt adults' behaviour, e.g. in the form of smoking and use of alcohol, is evident. But the conscious behaviour in this context only concerns the forms, not the content. Secondary school pupils are as unaware of the content as younger children are. How could children and adolescents acquire any understanding for their behaviour when the great majority lack contact with significant adults?

Significant adults are adults who, in their dealings with children and adolescents, continuously give them information about the adult world as a supportive and regulatory system. This occurs quite naturally within the framework of each topic of conversation that is of mutual interest to an adult and a child or adolescent. Such knowledge is not something that is passed on from one individual to another as an object but as a result of discussing a topical issue together. It is this kind of mutual discussion of an existential problem that parents should be the first to undertake with their children when they are small and later as they grow up.

However, parents' are often ambiguous in fulfilling their role; they may be at a loss to know what to do in the event of sudden crises or even in simple everyday situations. Furthermore, there is a tendency to express demands or criticism concerning functions in society that are considered to be most suitable to take over parental responsibilities, i.e. the child care, educational and judicial services. It is that we in our presentation call parental

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abdication. The important point in this context, however, is that parents cannot abdicate.

Because of parents' uncertainty about their own role or unwillingness/inability to fulfil it adequately, young people tend to replace adult discussion partners with peer comrades, who as a rule can themselves only guess what applies in the adult world-it is a matter of the blind leading the blind. This in turn may easily lead to the younger generation's world and the adult world appearing to be on a collision course and being treated accordingly by both sides. Edfeldt found that force was used in about 25% of all Swedish families, despite the fact that corporal punishment has been illegal in Sweden since lst July 1979 (Edfeldt 1985). Approximately the same percentage of persons interviewed also advocated the use of force by parents in general or in certain provocative situations in a study commissioned by the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs at the beginning of 1994 (Lundgren 1994). This undoubtedly places further obstacles in the way to communication of knowledge about the adult world as a supportive and regulatory system as well as young people's gradual integration into the adult world. Behaviour that frightens adults is therefore highly valued among the militant faction that tends to set standards in the adolescent world. It applauds violence against teachers, for example, and the sort of unprovoked violence that so-called kickers exemplify.

The above should not be construed as a plea for a return to old­fashioned norms and an upbringing according to Christian principles. Knowledge of the adult world as a basis for setting limits and other decisions regulating behaviour must be created in collaboration between two or more persons with a common interest in the rational decisions that may be reached concerning the problem at hand.

An understanding of the adult world as a regulatory system must always be founded on the security of an already functioning perception of the adult world as a supportive system gives. In addition, the experience of the actual process that leads to mutual discoveries concerning normative decisions is important for the relationship between those who have gone through this process together. It is in this way that relationships can be strengthened and generation gaps bridged.

DISCUSSION

The young people in our study start by drinking alcohol and

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eventually progress to use of drugs and violence in order to feel grown up. This equals chosen means to a consciously wanted end. If alcohol and/ or drug dependence develops, the situation is radically changed-a pathological condition is present. But up to that point effective treatment options exist. It is at the stage before alcohol and drug dependence have developed that primary preventive measures must be taken; later it is often too late to save the young people.

We also find from the research so far performed that people tend to believe they are treating the underlying problem by treating alcohol dependence, for example. But our material indicates that alcohol dependence can be one of several symptoms of a basic inability to obtain knowledge of 'the adult world as a supportive and regulatory system'.

The problem then becomes particularly complicated as it is not the young people's fault that they are unable to obtain proper information but is due to their parents' inability and/ or unwillingness to make time in everyday situations to explain how the adult world works.

It is enormously important to establish 'the adult world as a supportive system' before starting to make demands of limit-setting type, i.e. before trying to use the adult world as a regulatory system. When adults try to set limits, i.e. establish the regulatory system without their children first having acquired the experience and knowledge needed to enable them to trust their parents' intentions and thereby feel secure in relation to the adult world, adults' rules and changes of rules-perhaps sudden and made in affect-are liable to be interpreted as an expression of abuse of power. Power and violence then acquire mystical significance. This may easily lead to young people who resort to violence that frightens adults, and thereby wreak vengeance for the collective abuse of power by adults, becoming the idols of their peers. The violence as such is then justified or even idealised.

This is the background to the 'vague condemnation or semi­acceptance of violence' expressed by our ordinary youngsters in the NOSO material. Proper primary preventive treatment to halt the obvious trend towards increasing brutality, above all unprovoked violence, in Western society, often in combination with abuse of alcohol and drugs, seems impossible until the symptomatic phenomena and the underlying causes of these social problems have been thoroughly analysed with this kind of combination of scientific and behavioural methods.

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REFERENCES

Edfeldt, A.W. (1985). Final report from the SUSA project on corporal punishment and violence in the home. Stockholm.

Edfeldt, A.W. & Janson, U. (1995). Actions of Behavioural Scientists. Stockholm. Glaser, B.G. & Strauss, A. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago. Glaser, B. B. (1992). Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis. Mill Valley. Glaser, B.B. (1993). Examples of Grounded Theory: A Reader. Mill Valley. Glaser, B.B. (1994), More Grounded Theory Methodology: A Reader. Mill Valley. Lundgren, L. (1994). The general public's attitude to different ways of bringing up

children. Stockholm. SCB. Miitzell, S. (1988). Alcohol consumption in a population sample of urban men-with

neuropsychological assessment and computed tomography of the brain. Department of Family Medicine, Uppsala University, Uppsala. Thesis.

Miitzell, S. (1994). Life with an alcoholic father. A contribution to the understanding of possible early development of alcoholism. Department of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm. Thesis.

Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park. Wallace, W.L. (1971). The Logic of Science in Sociology. Chicago. vonWright, G.H. (1971). Expla11ation and Understanding. London.

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