Ylva Svensson - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Ylva Svensson
Scandinavian journal of educational research, Feb 22, 2024
With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the y... more With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the youth growing up in a new culture of settlement. The issue is increasingly studied; however, little of the research conducted has combined a developmental with a contextual approach. The aim of this dissertation was to explore the adaptation of immigrant youth on the basis of developmental theories and models which put emphasis on setting or contextual conditions. This entailed viewing immigrant youths as developing organisms that actively interact with their environments. Further, immigrant youths were seen as embedded in multiple settings, at different levels and with different contextual features. Two of the overall research questions addressed how contextual features of the settings in which the youth are embedded were related to adaptation. Results from all three studies combined to show that the contextual feature of a setting is not of prime or sole importance for the adaptation of immigrant youth, and that the contextual feature of SES diversity is of greater importance than the ethnic compositions of settings. The next two overall research questions addressed how the linkage between settings was related to adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation is not always setting specific and that what is happening in one setting can be related to adaptation in another setting. Further, it was found that the cultural distance between settings is related to adaption, but that contextual factors affect this relationship. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggests that the adaptation of immigrant youth is a complex matter that is explained better by interaction and indirect effects than by main and direct effects. This highlights the importance of taking all settings in which the immigrant youths are embedded into account and to account for how the settings interact to understand the factors that foster and hinder positive adaptation of immigrant youth.
Journal of Adolescence, Aug 1, 2019
Introduction: Depressive symptoms and non-suicidal self-injury not only increase in prevalence du... more Introduction: Depressive symptoms and non-suicidal self-injury not only increase in prevalence during adolescence, but they can also occur together. Both psychological problems seem to have similar precipitating conditions, suggesting they have transdiagnostic conditions-personal or contextual characteristics that contribute to co-occurrence. We sought to understand when these two problems co-occur and what is related to their co-occurrence. Methods: Using a pattern-centered approach and two waves of longitudinal data collected annually, we examined latent profiles of depressive symptoms and self-injury among a Swedish sample of adolescents aged 12 to 16 (M ageT1 = 13.65 years, SD = 0.64), 53.7% boys and 47.3% girls. Most of the adolescents were Swedish (89%), with parents who were married or cohabitating (68%). We also examined the transitions between profiles over time. Results: Our results suggest that during this time frame, depressive symptoms and self-injury tend to emerge and stabilize or abate together. We also examined a broad array of predictors, including individual characteristics, emotion dysregulation, experiences with friends, parents' negative reactions to behavior, and school stress. The significant unique predictors suggest that adolescents who reported being subjected to relational aggression, having negative experiences while drinking, and low self-esteem had a greater probability of moving from moderate to high levels or maintaining high levels of depressive symptoms and self-injury, compared to adolescents classified in the other statuses. Conclusions: Focusing on negative interpersonal experiences and selfesteem as transdiagnostic conditions may guide research and aid clinicians in supporting adolescents who feel depressed and engage in self-injury.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, May 23, 2022
Editorial on the Research Topic The Consequences of COVID-19 on the Mental Wellbeing of Parents, ... more Editorial on the Research Topic The Consequences of COVID-19 on the Mental Wellbeing of Parents, Children and Adolescents
Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural... more Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural influences
Will You Help Me Adjust? : The Adjustment of Immigrant Youths Based on Their Friendship Formations
The following report has been informed by the observation of Borderline Offensive activities in S... more The following report has been informed by the observation of Borderline Offensive activities in Sweden, to which Ylva Svensson had direct access to. The activities in Sweden started in an artistic residency that took place between 1st and 10th June 2018. The artistic residency was hosted by the Nordic Watercolour Museum, and produced in cooperation with the municipality of Tjörn. The initial question of the residency was: how can humour and art help us to amuse each other and build relationships? The artists involved were: Abduljabbar Alsuhili, an actor and cultural activist, living in Sweden, originally from Yemen; the anonymous group Creative Destruction, a street and guerilla artistic collective from Sofia, Bulgaria; Ivana Šáteková, a visual and new media artist from Bratislava, Slovakia; and Omar Abi Azar, a theatre maker and director from Beirut, Lebanon. As part of the artistic residency, a 2-day creative workshop for local youth was organised, targeting both newcomers (asylum...
ISRI International Society of Research on Identity, Italien, Neapel 13-15 maj, 2019, 2019
Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural... more Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural influences
Journal of Adolescence, 2019
ABSTRACTIntroductionDepressive symptoms and non‐suicidal self‐injury not only increase in prevale... more ABSTRACTIntroductionDepressive symptoms and non‐suicidal self‐injury not only increase in prevalence during adolescence, but they can also occur together. Both psychological problems seem to have similar precipitating conditions, suggesting they have transdiagnostic conditions—personal or contextual characteristics that contribute to co‐occurrence. We sought to understand when these two problems co‐occur and what is related to their co‐occurrence.MethodsUsing a pattern‐centered approach and two waves of longitudinal data collected annually, we examined latent profiles of depressive symptoms and self‐injury among a Swedish sample of adolescents aged 12 to 16 (MageT1 = 13.65 years, SD = 0.64), 53.7% boys and 47.3% girls. Most of the adolescents were Swedish (89%), with parents who were married or cohabitating (68%). We also examined the transitions between profiles over time.ResultsOur results suggest that during this time frame, depressive symptoms and self‐injury tend to emerge and ...
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2019
In Sweden, as in many other European countries, poor neighborhoods with ethnically diverse inhabi... more In Sweden, as in many other European countries, poor neighborhoods with ethnically diverse inhabitants and high crime rates have grown up around big cities in the last decades. We hypothesized that, compared with adolescents in advantaged neighborhoods, adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods would perceive their schools as relatively safe, due to their contrast with the more threatening and dangerous neighborhoods they lived in. Also, they would perceive their schools as relatively more open to their influence, due to the contrast with a lack of influence in their families. More broadly, they would experience their schools as supporting environments to a greater extent than adolescents in advantaged neighborhoods. We tested these ideas using a sample of 1390 adolescents ( Mage = 14.34, SD = 1.01) in a Swedish city. The hypotheses were supported, and the findings were most salient for immigrant adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Thus, particularly for immigrant adolescen...
We proposed that for adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods schools environments could... more We proposed that for adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods schools environments could create a contrast to the out-of-school settings. We proposed two contrast effects, in which experie ...
With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the y... more With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the youth growing up in a new culture of settlement. The issue is increasingly studied; however, little of the research conducted has combined a developmental with a contextual approach. The aim of this dissertation was to explore the adaptation of immigrant youth on the basis of developmental theories and models which put emphasis on setting or contextual conditions. This entailed viewing immigrant youths as developing organisms that actively interact with their environments. Further, immigrant youths were seen as embedded in multiple settings, at different levels and with different contextual features. Two of the overall research questions addressed how contextual features of the settings in which the youth are embedded were related to adaptation. Results from all three studies combined to show that the contextual feature of a setting is not of prime or sole importance for the adaptation of immigrant youth, and that the contextual feature of SES diversity is of greater importance than the ethnic compositions of settings. The next two overall research questions addressed how the linkage between settings was related to adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation is not always setting specific and that what is happening in one setting can be related to adaptation in another setting. Further, it was found that the cultural distance between settings is related to adaption, but that contextual factors affect this relationship. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggests that the adaptation of immigrant youth is a complex matter that is explained better by interaction and indirect effects than by main and direct effects. This highlights the importance of taking all settings in which the immigrant youths are embedded into account and to account for how the settings interact to understand the factors that foster and hinder positive adaptation of immigrant youth.
Global Perspectives on Well-Being in Immigrant Families, 2013
As children reach adolescence, their social worlds shift and they start spending more time with p... more As children reach adolescence, their social worlds shift and they start spending more time with peers away from home. It is easy to see how this process can make parents worry that their adolescent will get in touch with the wrong peers. Previous findings suggest that one of the goals of parents with regard to their adolescents’ peer relations is to keep them from coming into contact with deviant peers. By supervising their adolescents’ actions, and providing rules for peer interactions, parents can help their adolescent to avoid peers who they feel are bad influences. However, not much attention has been paid to how adolescents experience these attempts and how they react to them.
Will You Help Me Adjust? : The Adjustment of Immigrant Youths Based on Their Friendship Formations
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2012
This study examines selection and influence related to delinquent behaviors of immigrant and noni... more This study examines selection and influence related to delinquent behaviors of immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents attending three majority-immigrant schools (54% to 65.2% immigrant) and four minority-immigrant schools (11.1% to 25.1% immigrant) in one community. The sample included 1,169 youths (50.4% male; 24.2% immigrant) initially between the ages of 12 and 16 years ( M =13.92, SD = 0.85). Results showed that immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents were similar to their peers on delinquent behaviors, and peer selection and social influence operated in a complementary manner to explain this similarity. The processes did not differ between immigrants and nonimmigrants or between school contexts, suggesting that immigrants do not differ from nonimmigrants on either the prevalence or the processes behind delinquency.
European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2011
Multiethnic societies typically aim to have immigrant and native youths mix and be friends, prefe... more Multiethnic societies typically aim to have immigrant and native youths mix and be friends, preferably in all contexts in which they spend time. Schools and neighbourhoods are the two settings where youths spend the most time with peers during adolescence. The present study explored the in-and out-of-school peer groups of 174 immigrant junior high school pupils (Mean age ¼ 14.39) who attended an integrated school but lived in a segregated neighbourhood. A person-oriented approach was used and cluster analyses were conducted both within and across the two settings. The results show that youths mostly have the same kind of friendship formations in both settings, regardless of the ethnic composition of each setting. In terms of adaptation, the results consistently show that for boys, having only immigrant friends is related to problematic adaptation in both settings. No relationship between peer formations and adaptation was found for girls. The study highlights the importance of considering gender and viewing youths as embedded in systems of multiple settings, in order to achieve true integration.
Scandinavian journal of educational research, Feb 22, 2024
With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the y... more With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the youth growing up in a new culture of settlement. The issue is increasingly studied; however, little of the research conducted has combined a developmental with a contextual approach. The aim of this dissertation was to explore the adaptation of immigrant youth on the basis of developmental theories and models which put emphasis on setting or contextual conditions. This entailed viewing immigrant youths as developing organisms that actively interact with their environments. Further, immigrant youths were seen as embedded in multiple settings, at different levels and with different contextual features. Two of the overall research questions addressed how contextual features of the settings in which the youth are embedded were related to adaptation. Results from all three studies combined to show that the contextual feature of a setting is not of prime or sole importance for the adaptation of immigrant youth, and that the contextual feature of SES diversity is of greater importance than the ethnic compositions of settings. The next two overall research questions addressed how the linkage between settings was related to adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation is not always setting specific and that what is happening in one setting can be related to adaptation in another setting. Further, it was found that the cultural distance between settings is related to adaption, but that contextual factors affect this relationship. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggests that the adaptation of immigrant youth is a complex matter that is explained better by interaction and indirect effects than by main and direct effects. This highlights the importance of taking all settings in which the immigrant youths are embedded into account and to account for how the settings interact to understand the factors that foster and hinder positive adaptation of immigrant youth.
Journal of Adolescence, Aug 1, 2019
Introduction: Depressive symptoms and non-suicidal self-injury not only increase in prevalence du... more Introduction: Depressive symptoms and non-suicidal self-injury not only increase in prevalence during adolescence, but they can also occur together. Both psychological problems seem to have similar precipitating conditions, suggesting they have transdiagnostic conditions-personal or contextual characteristics that contribute to co-occurrence. We sought to understand when these two problems co-occur and what is related to their co-occurrence. Methods: Using a pattern-centered approach and two waves of longitudinal data collected annually, we examined latent profiles of depressive symptoms and self-injury among a Swedish sample of adolescents aged 12 to 16 (M ageT1 = 13.65 years, SD = 0.64), 53.7% boys and 47.3% girls. Most of the adolescents were Swedish (89%), with parents who were married or cohabitating (68%). We also examined the transitions between profiles over time. Results: Our results suggest that during this time frame, depressive symptoms and self-injury tend to emerge and stabilize or abate together. We also examined a broad array of predictors, including individual characteristics, emotion dysregulation, experiences with friends, parents' negative reactions to behavior, and school stress. The significant unique predictors suggest that adolescents who reported being subjected to relational aggression, having negative experiences while drinking, and low self-esteem had a greater probability of moving from moderate to high levels or maintaining high levels of depressive symptoms and self-injury, compared to adolescents classified in the other statuses. Conclusions: Focusing on negative interpersonal experiences and selfesteem as transdiagnostic conditions may guide research and aid clinicians in supporting adolescents who feel depressed and engage in self-injury.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, May 23, 2022
Editorial on the Research Topic The Consequences of COVID-19 on the Mental Wellbeing of Parents, ... more Editorial on the Research Topic The Consequences of COVID-19 on the Mental Wellbeing of Parents, Children and Adolescents
Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural... more Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural influences
Will You Help Me Adjust? : The Adjustment of Immigrant Youths Based on Their Friendship Formations
The following report has been informed by the observation of Borderline Offensive activities in S... more The following report has been informed by the observation of Borderline Offensive activities in Sweden, to which Ylva Svensson had direct access to. The activities in Sweden started in an artistic residency that took place between 1st and 10th June 2018. The artistic residency was hosted by the Nordic Watercolour Museum, and produced in cooperation with the municipality of Tjörn. The initial question of the residency was: how can humour and art help us to amuse each other and build relationships? The artists involved were: Abduljabbar Alsuhili, an actor and cultural activist, living in Sweden, originally from Yemen; the anonymous group Creative Destruction, a street and guerilla artistic collective from Sofia, Bulgaria; Ivana Šáteková, a visual and new media artist from Bratislava, Slovakia; and Omar Abi Azar, a theatre maker and director from Beirut, Lebanon. As part of the artistic residency, a 2-day creative workshop for local youth was organised, targeting both newcomers (asylum...
ISRI International Society of Research on Identity, Italien, Neapel 13-15 maj, 2019, 2019
Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural... more Navigating between cultures : adolescent immigrants' adaptation to heritage and host cultural influences
Journal of Adolescence, 2019
ABSTRACTIntroductionDepressive symptoms and non‐suicidal self‐injury not only increase in prevale... more ABSTRACTIntroductionDepressive symptoms and non‐suicidal self‐injury not only increase in prevalence during adolescence, but they can also occur together. Both psychological problems seem to have similar precipitating conditions, suggesting they have transdiagnostic conditions—personal or contextual characteristics that contribute to co‐occurrence. We sought to understand when these two problems co‐occur and what is related to their co‐occurrence.MethodsUsing a pattern‐centered approach and two waves of longitudinal data collected annually, we examined latent profiles of depressive symptoms and self‐injury among a Swedish sample of adolescents aged 12 to 16 (MageT1 = 13.65 years, SD = 0.64), 53.7% boys and 47.3% girls. Most of the adolescents were Swedish (89%), with parents who were married or cohabitating (68%). We also examined the transitions between profiles over time.ResultsOur results suggest that during this time frame, depressive symptoms and self‐injury tend to emerge and ...
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2019
In Sweden, as in many other European countries, poor neighborhoods with ethnically diverse inhabi... more In Sweden, as in many other European countries, poor neighborhoods with ethnically diverse inhabitants and high crime rates have grown up around big cities in the last decades. We hypothesized that, compared with adolescents in advantaged neighborhoods, adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods would perceive their schools as relatively safe, due to their contrast with the more threatening and dangerous neighborhoods they lived in. Also, they would perceive their schools as relatively more open to their influence, due to the contrast with a lack of influence in their families. More broadly, they would experience their schools as supporting environments to a greater extent than adolescents in advantaged neighborhoods. We tested these ideas using a sample of 1390 adolescents ( Mage = 14.34, SD = 1.01) in a Swedish city. The hypotheses were supported, and the findings were most salient for immigrant adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Thus, particularly for immigrant adolescen...
We proposed that for adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods schools environments could... more We proposed that for adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods schools environments could create a contrast to the out-of-school settings. We proposed two contrast effects, in which experie ...
With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the y... more With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the youth growing up in a new culture of settlement. The issue is increasingly studied; however, little of the research conducted has combined a developmental with a contextual approach. The aim of this dissertation was to explore the adaptation of immigrant youth on the basis of developmental theories and models which put emphasis on setting or contextual conditions. This entailed viewing immigrant youths as developing organisms that actively interact with their environments. Further, immigrant youths were seen as embedded in multiple settings, at different levels and with different contextual features. Two of the overall research questions addressed how contextual features of the settings in which the youth are embedded were related to adaptation. Results from all three studies combined to show that the contextual feature of a setting is not of prime or sole importance for the adaptation of immigrant youth, and that the contextual feature of SES diversity is of greater importance than the ethnic compositions of settings. The next two overall research questions addressed how the linkage between settings was related to adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation is not always setting specific and that what is happening in one setting can be related to adaptation in another setting. Further, it was found that the cultural distance between settings is related to adaption, but that contextual factors affect this relationship. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggests that the adaptation of immigrant youth is a complex matter that is explained better by interaction and indirect effects than by main and direct effects. This highlights the importance of taking all settings in which the immigrant youths are embedded into account and to account for how the settings interact to understand the factors that foster and hinder positive adaptation of immigrant youth.
Global Perspectives on Well-Being in Immigrant Families, 2013
As children reach adolescence, their social worlds shift and they start spending more time with p... more As children reach adolescence, their social worlds shift and they start spending more time with peers away from home. It is easy to see how this process can make parents worry that their adolescent will get in touch with the wrong peers. Previous findings suggest that one of the goals of parents with regard to their adolescents’ peer relations is to keep them from coming into contact with deviant peers. By supervising their adolescents’ actions, and providing rules for peer interactions, parents can help their adolescent to avoid peers who they feel are bad influences. However, not much attention has been paid to how adolescents experience these attempts and how they react to them.
Will You Help Me Adjust? : The Adjustment of Immigrant Youths Based on Their Friendship Formations
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2012
This study examines selection and influence related to delinquent behaviors of immigrant and noni... more This study examines selection and influence related to delinquent behaviors of immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents attending three majority-immigrant schools (54% to 65.2% immigrant) and four minority-immigrant schools (11.1% to 25.1% immigrant) in one community. The sample included 1,169 youths (50.4% male; 24.2% immigrant) initially between the ages of 12 and 16 years ( M =13.92, SD = 0.85). Results showed that immigrant and nonimmigrant adolescents were similar to their peers on delinquent behaviors, and peer selection and social influence operated in a complementary manner to explain this similarity. The processes did not differ between immigrants and nonimmigrants or between school contexts, suggesting that immigrants do not differ from nonimmigrants on either the prevalence or the processes behind delinquency.
European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2011
Multiethnic societies typically aim to have immigrant and native youths mix and be friends, prefe... more Multiethnic societies typically aim to have immigrant and native youths mix and be friends, preferably in all contexts in which they spend time. Schools and neighbourhoods are the two settings where youths spend the most time with peers during adolescence. The present study explored the in-and out-of-school peer groups of 174 immigrant junior high school pupils (Mean age ¼ 14.39) who attended an integrated school but lived in a segregated neighbourhood. A person-oriented approach was used and cluster analyses were conducted both within and across the two settings. The results show that youths mostly have the same kind of friendship formations in both settings, regardless of the ethnic composition of each setting. In terms of adaptation, the results consistently show that for boys, having only immigrant friends is related to problematic adaptation in both settings. No relationship between peer formations and adaptation was found for girls. The study highlights the importance of considering gender and viewing youths as embedded in systems of multiple settings, in order to achieve true integration.