Systemic Family Therapy Competences in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Care

This article is based on a doctoral research project aiming to identify a comprehensive and detailed outline of the systemic therapist competences in child and adolescent mental health care in Norway. Because of the growing demands to offer specialized services within child and adolescent mental health care, I intended the identified competences to target the psychosocial difficulties that are categorized as associated abnormal psychosocial situations (axis 5) in the multiaxial diagnostic system (WHO, Multiaxial classification of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. The ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders in children and adolescents. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996). The project is based on twelve qualitative in-depth interviews with six experienced systemic family therapists, and fieldwork observations of the therapists (participants) in practice. The qualitative methodology is based on Grounded Theory and five overarching categories were identified through the analysis: (1): the importance of ethical and contextual awareness in systemic therapy; (2) the systemic therapist’s stance; (3) therapeutic processes; (4) therapeutic practices; and (5) session-specific features. Challenges, such as limiting the systemic approach to five overarching competences, are discussed alongside this strengths and limitations of the study. The detailed outline of systemic therapist competences is intended to offer a framework for delivering flexible, yet specialized systemic therapy in the context of child and adolescent mental health care. This research may therefore facilitate a “bridge-building process” between mental health’s biomedical focus and postmodern systemic ideas.     

Theft reduction in a grocery store through product identification and graphing of losses for employees

Shoplifting and employee theft constitute a major problem for retailers. Previous research has described techniques for effectively reducing either type of theft but has not addressed the problem of thefts of unspecified origin. In a grocery store we evaluated the effect of identifying for employees frequently stolen products from three groups of items and graphing, twice weekly in the lunchroom, losses for the separate groups. After the products were identified and losses graphed, thefts from the three groups dropped from eight per day to two per day.     

THREE MODELS FOR THE ANALYSIS OF SUBJECTIVE RATIOS

SJÖBERG, L. Three models for the analysis of subjective ratios. Scand. J. Psychol. , 12, 217–240.–Circular area and heaviness were judged under four response modes: free ratio, per cent, similarity, and multiple estimation. Three log linear models were suggested for these data, each new model bringing in more free parameters to be fitted and assuming less strict types of invariance of subjective values. The most demanding, and traditional, model frequently had to be rejected. This "inconsistency" could be attributed both to the factor of relative size of the two stimuli in a comparative judgment and to the fixed vs. free factor. As a byproduct it was found that the Eisler-Ekman "similarity equation" was not supported by these data.     

THE DIMENSIONALITY PARADOX IN COMPARATIVE JUDGMENT: A RESOLUTION

S jöberg , L. The dimensionality paradox in comparative judgment: a resolution. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1968, 9, 97–108. — It has often been possible to erect unidimensional scales although stimuli have been clearly multidimensional. This fact is surprising since one expects the multidimensional structure to be reflected in data. It is suggested that this structure might be recovered from dispersions of comparative judgments. The suggestion is shown to be valid on three sets of paired comparison data. Implications for uni- and multidimensional scaling are discussed.     

Successive intervals scaling of paired comparisons

In this paper a method is developed for analyzing data resulting from the use of a modification of the usual paired comparisons procedure which allows for ratings of size of difference. The scaling model is essentially an extension of the Thurstonian successive intervals model. The method is applied to scaling of a set of nine immoral actions and the results agree rather well with those from conventional successive intervals scaling of the same stimuli.This study was supported by a grant from the Swedish Council for Social Science Research.     

DIFFERENTIATION OF CHARACTER NEUROSIS AND SYMPTOM NEUROSIS ON THE BASIS OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TWO SERIAL EXPERIMENTS

The difference between two serial tests as regards signs of hysteria and obsession-compulsion is compared with differences in number of symptoms reported by the patient. Signs in the more formal colour-word test, measuring habitual behaviour patterns, correspond to fewer symptoms than signs in a tachistoscopic test revealing more of the perceptual representation (content) of behaviour disorders. This difference is supposed to reflect important aspects of the difference between character neurosis and symptom neurosis.     

SUCCESSIVE INTERVALS SCALING WITH UNEQUAL VARIANCES AND COVARIANCES

The paper describes a solution for scale values in successive intervals scaling which does not assume equal covariances and variances. A more restrictive distribution assumption is made, however. Advantages and disadvantages of the method are discussed in relation to the two available conventional scaling techniques for scaling with unequal variances.