Study of externalising and internalising problem behaviour
Post Doc Miia Bask has published the article "Externalising and internalising problem behaviour among Swedish adolescent boys and girls" in the latest issue of International Journal of Social Welfare.
Main content
The focus in the article is the occurrence and coexistence of externalizing and internalizing problem behavior among Swedish boys and girls, and investigated whether there are differences in the accumulation of problems among adolescents with different behavioral, demographic and social characteristics. The results were discussed in the context of self-salience schemas. The source material comprised all ninth grade pupils in a province in central Sweden in 2008 (N = 3,095). First, girls were found to be more prone to experience internalizing problem behavior, whereas no sex-differences were found regarding externalizing problem behavior.
Second, multidimensional scaling maps indicated that, compared with boys, self-esteem and the PsychoSomatic Problem (PSP) scale among girls more closely indicated externalizing problem behavior components, whereas anxiety was situated far from the other externalizing problem behavior indicators.
Finally, linear regression analyses indicated family type as the primary explanatory background factor for externalizing problem behavior and economic hardship as the primary explanatory background factor for internalizing problem behavior.
Read more on the International Journal of Social Welfare website.