Social Experience Research Articles

3.N. Round table: Health inequalities over life-course between people with & without childhood social care experience

Abstract The burden of ill health is not carried equally, children and young people with experiences of childhood social care (CSC), e.g. kinship, foster, residential or ‘out-of-home’ care, are affected by multiple cumulative disadvantages and experience high inequalities in health compared to the rest of the population. CSC, and the adversities often associated with it, are linked to health problems that persist into adulthood and adversely affect education, employment, and the future European society. Public and policy interest in improving outcomes for CSC recipients has increased markedly, as has research on the association between CSC and life outcomes. But current research is siloed, with limited comparative perspective and has not led to a strong evidence base to inform policy and practice. Wider international networks to connect research, practice and policy are needed to change this. The objective of the workshop is to bring together evidence on health inequalities between people with and without CSC experience across Europe. The panel will set the scene for the discussion by raising questions that stem from their work for the audience to respond. We will ask the audience to engage with these questions based on their experience (e.g. academic, clinical or other professional). The real-time reactions will be collected via Mentimeter during presentations, moderated and fed back to the audience and panel for discussion. This will allow us to collect diverse responses across countries and from different professional perspectives, providing learning and insights for both the panel and audience. The added value of a EUPHA workshop is the high-profile European level attention on this population. A spotlight on CSC experiences bringing together evidence from topic experts and health practitioners committed to improving childhood health inequalities across Europe and will foster a strong foundation for future collaborations and comparative research. The format is interactive and will include an introductory video of lived experiences of CSC to put a human face on this topic. We will then hear 4x5 minute expert presentations from social epidemiologists, health and social care professionals (20m) followed by a moderated discussion with the audience (35m). The presentations cover research across Europe, consider how inequalities accumulate across the life course to place children in care settings and identify where gaps in services fail children. MA sets the scene by asking what the international evidence is telling us about the health of people with CSC experiences. VS explores the accumulation of disadvantage across the life-course and intergenerational experiences of CSC. HF uses the Swedish example to ask why welfare services are not meeting the health needs of children. Finally, SS will consider solutions: what additions support is required for health practitioners dealing with children in care settings and what can/cannot be achieved from within the doctor’s office? Key messages • Participants will gain new insights on the health of children with social care experience from each other by sharing evidence and discussing key questions from diverse perspectives across Europe. • The workshop provides a foundation for participants to build future international networks and comparative research that will lead to a strong evidence base to inform policy and practice.

Abstract concepts and expertise: the case of institutional concepts

Recent views recognize that abstract concepts encompass a variety of exemplars, each relying on different dimensions, including not only sensorimotor but also inner, linguistic, and social experiences. How these dimensions characterize types of abstract concepts, and whether their weight varies across contexts and individuals remains an open question. We investigated the role of linguistic and social situations in the processing of institutional concepts, such as justice, by individuals with different levels of expertise. In a priming study, legal experts and non-experts were asked to respond to target words (go-trials) consisting of different kinds of abstract (institutional, theoretical) and concrete concepts (food, tools) and to ignore filler words (no-go trials). The verbal stimuli were primed by pictures depicting social-action, linguistic-social, linguistic-textual situations, and a control condition. As predicted, critical priming modulated performance on abstract concepts, likely due to their highly context-dependent meaning. Interestingly, we found that the processing of institutional concepts was selectively facilitated by social action prime, suggesting that this situational content may be integrated to support their representation. Crucially, the dialogic context, the linguistic social prime, affected more non-experts than law-experts, who tended to frame institutional concepts as shared idea for regulating social practices. Our results show that linguistic and social inputs become differently salient for institutional concepts representation depending on individual competence.

The Transactional Nature of Autistic Young Adults’ Sensory and Social Experiences: Negotiating Young Adulthood

The Transactional Nature of Autistic Young Adults’ Sensory and Social Experiences: Negotiating Young Adulthood

Supplemental Material for Transactional Experiences of Discrimination, Depressive Symptoms, and Ethnoracial Socialization in Mexican-Origin Families

Supplemental Material for Transactional Experiences of Discrimination, Depressive Symptoms, and Ethnoracial Socialization in Mexican-Origin Families

Credible, Competent Contributors: Children and Young People as Postdigital Citizen Social Scientists

AbstractI argue that participatory action research (PAR) is a valuable means by which to advance citizen social science, not by researching with and on adults, but with children and young people (CYP). Given the right opportunities, using child-friendly and child-centred research methods, CYP can be credible, competent contributors to social science, including the digital environment. The foundational goals of PAR are empowerment, transformation, and enfranchisement of the traditionally marginalised, and none are more universally and structurally marginalised than CYP. Using a child rights argument, I explain why CYP continue to be excluded from research and why there is still so much scepticism that CYP are credible contributors. One reason is childism, a system of oppression, prejudice, and discrimination against CYP on account of their perceived status as not yet human and not fully rational beings. Childism entails the belief that adults are automatically superior to children. I argue further that CYP’s participation in postdigital social science research enacts the entitlements in Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), even though state parties, having ratified this landmark convention, find it very challenging to do more than simply laud its aims. Using three case studies of CYP’s contribution to research and human rights activism, I make the case that they are expert knowers of their own social and digital experiences and have the skills and insights to examine their social worlds in ways that adult researchers too easily overlook, downplay, or simply ignore. As importantly is that CYP are expert users of digital and social media. Their epistemic and ontological experiences as users, creators, contributors, and disseminators of content, and as targets of malign actors, must be included in any research, policy, or law.

The effect of social experience and content quality on the use of celebrity endorsement strategy in the social commerce context: a case study of Indonesia

The effect of social experience and content quality on the use of celebrity endorsement strategy in the social commerce context: a case study of Indonesia

Hermeneutical Injustice Through Defective Concept Possession

AbstractThis paper identifies and analyses a novel species of hermeneutical epistemic injustice (HI). Fricker’s traditional account analyses HI in terms of a collective conceptual gap. (Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). Building on this, Simion’s analysis (in: Bondy P, Carter JA (eds) Well-founded belief: new essays on the epistemic basing relation. Routledge, New York, 2019) suggests the phenomenon is broader, and thus more ubiquitous: specifically, that agents who have been hermeneutically marginalised can be susceptible to HI through failing to ground their social experience in conceptual resources that are already available. This paper advances the literature further and presents a novel strand of the phenomena, where agents both have, and base, their experience on available concepts but are still subject to HI. I argue that this is an important species of HI that should be investigated and accounted for, and I suggest that in virtue of being hermeneutically marginalised, often agents only have available to them defective or oppressive concepts. I further provide a case study of what this can look like online and new concerns social media presents for this kind of HI. CW: Mentions of transphobia, racism, sexism, rape.

Gendering Empire: A Historiographical Exploration

In her landmark work in feminist theory The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues how gender is a totalising, transformative social experience. In this essay, I will argue that this total construction of power and identity finds resonance the colonial project. As alluded to in Franz Fanon’s vision of decolonisation, colonialism wholly moulds and creates individuals. The link is established in using gender as a category of historical analysis for empires, where the principal analytical prism is a Foucauldian dispersion of power, in which power emanates through knowledge-fields, discourse and social relations rather than through simple, unmasked, top-down imposition. Two strands emerge: the genealogy of power and the reproduction of power. The former traces how gender has contributed to moulding, naturalising and essentialising colonial hierarchies, while the latter addresses how historical writing itself illuminates or occludes narratives, agencies and subjectivities, in turn creating new meanings. However, gender as a category of historical analysis is useful for historians of empire, contingent upon the adoption of an intersectional approach that does not posit gender as primary to other axes of oppression. Furthermore, the consciousness of its inessentiality – particularly that of the binary – is necessary to avoid perpetuating Eurocentrism and its specific demarcation of the concepts of gender and race.

Hapstick-Figure: Investigating the Design of a Haptic Representation of Human Gestures from Theater Performances for Blind and Visually-Impaired People

Theaters serve as platforms that transport audiences into diverse worlds, offering a collective enjoyment of live performances and a shared cultural experience. However, theater performances have strong visual components, such as physical props and actors’ movements and gestures, which are inaccessible to visually impaired and blind audience members and thus can exclude them from such shared social experiences. We conducted formative interviews with eight blind and visually impaired people about their experiences with barriers to theater performance gestures. We then present Hapstick-Figure, a prototype design to represent and communicate human gestures via a 3D-printed tactile surface. Next, we used Hapstick-Figure as a technology probe in a qualitative evaluation with six of our BVI participants to explore non-visual interpretation and engagement with this prototype. We outline insights into the haptic representation of theater performance gestures and reflections on designing for accessibility in this context.

The effects of ostracism on preschoolers’ over-imitation behaviors

Overimitation represents an early developing behavior implicated in the emergence of learning, affective, and social competences. Adult overimitation is heavily affected by contextual variables such as social ostracism, the experience of being ignored by others in a social context, an experience that threatens several psychological needs, inducing the urge to reaffiliate with a social group to restore the original state of well-being. Yet, the impact of social ostracism on overimitation in children remains unclear. This study explored how a face-to-face triadic inclusive/ostracizing ball-tossing game affects overimitation in predominantly White 3-year-old children (n = 43, 53.4% boys) and 5-year-old children (n = 43, 41.8% boys). Results showed that preschoolers are highly affected by social ostracism experiences, with both age groups displaying decreased positive emotionality and heightened negative emotionality when ostracized. Despite this continuity in the affective and behavioral reactions toward social exclusion, imitation fidelity is differently affected by first-person ostracism; the 3-year-olds imitated more when ostracized, whereas the 5-year-olds did so when included, signaling a developmental difference between the strategy repertoire at different ages. Overall, the current findings shed light on the social influences driving preschoolers’ overimitation behaviors, emphasizing the importance of investigating social mechanisms underlying imitation and young children’s social cognition development.

In their narratives: academic socialization in the experience of sensory processing sensitivity among university students

IntroductionWhile much of the worldwide contemporary research on sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) and environmental sensitivity (ES) has relied on the participation of university students, there remains a significant gap in understanding the academic social experiences of those scoring high in SPS (i.e., highly sensitive individuals).MethodsTo address this gap, this exploratory study aimed to investigate in detail students’ academic socialization through their narratives. We conducted nine interviews with Italian university students who self-identified as highly sensitive.ResultsThrough thematic reflexive analysis, we identified and analyzed 6 themes (with subthemes and versions of subthemes) concerning their self-definitions, their university experience (in classroom, before, during, and after exams), and socialization with peers and teachers.DiscussionAfter 20 years of research on SPS, this study integrates the relevant literature into the field of social psychology and academic socialization, emphasizing the importance of understanding SPS within real-life educational contexts and considering highly sensitive students’ perspectives on their resources and challenges in attending university. By contributing to the emerging qualitative literature on SPS and ES, this study provides practical implications for educators and policymakers seeking to foster inclusive learning environments for all students.

Lived and care experiences of young people with chronic musculoskeletal pain and mental health conditions. A systematic review with qualitative evidence synthesis.

Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) and coexisting mental health conditions impact young people; however, little is known about their lived and care experiences. In a prospectively registered systematic review with qualitative evidence synthesis (PROSPERO: CRD42022369914), we explored the following: (1) lived physical, psychological, and social experiences; and (2) care experiences/preferences of young people living with CMP and mental health conditions. Inclusion criteria: studies using qualitative methods; participants aged 16 to 24 years with CMP and coexisting mental health condition(s); phenomenon explored included lived and/or care experiences. Seven databases were searched (inception to 19-May-2024), study quality was assessed, data were extracted and analysed thematically, and GRADE-CERQual was used to assess confidence in findings. Twenty-two studies (23 reports) were included (>239 participants, 82% women). Lived experiences yielded 4 themes (9 findings): 2-way relationship between CMP and mental health (2 findings, low to moderate confidence); psychosocial implications of CMP (3 findings, very low-moderate confidence); uncertainty about future (2 findings, low-moderate confidence); coping with CMP and mental health conditions (2 findings, low-moderate confidence). Care experiences/preferences yielded 3 themes (8 findings): navigating healthcare systems (2 findings, moderate confidence); receiving appropriate care (3 findings, very low-moderate confidence); point-of-care experiences and care preferences (3 findings, very low-moderate confidence). Chronic musculoskeletal pain and mental health conditions are interconnected, significantly impacting young people's lives, identities, and socialisation, yet services for CMP and mental health are often inadequate and poorly integrated. The mechanisms and interplay of CMP and mental health require deeper exploration, including how young people may be better supported with personalised, holistic, developmentally and/or life-stage-appropriate integrated care.

"I Needed to be That Voice": A Multi-Party Study of the Healthcare and Social Service Experiences and Needs of Transgender and Gender-diverse Older Adults in Canada.

The social contexts of transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) older adults remain under-examined. In this qualitative study, which involved six virtual focus groups with a total of 21 participants inclusive of TGD adults ages 50+, service providers, and community advocates, we sought to examine the healthcare and social service experiences and needs of TGD older adults in Canada. Drawing theoretically on critical gerontology and intersectionality, and methodologically on interpretive description, we examined the perspectives of different participant groups to develop insight into TGD older adults' issues and priorities in the context of their engagements with systems of care. Our findings revealed the role of histories of marginalization, precarity, contemporary sources of intersectional oppression, and resistance in shaping the experiences of this population, while also highlighting community-driven ground-up activities to address evolving needs. Drawing on this conceptualization, we explored the implications of our research for ongoing inquiry, policy, and practice.

Purkhyauli Thalo: Me and My Auto Ethnographical Study

The main purpose of this article is to connect my personal experience with social meaning. This article presents my personal experience as a story. In this auto ethnography knowledge production, I present myself and my own particular experience as an analytical narrative. Through this auto ethnography, I have once again connected with the world I lived in and the vivid experiences there through interaction. As a person is a social being, he learns social customs, values and conduct from the elders of the society and the person himself is the source of social information for him. I have taken as a source of information what I have learned directly from the society that brought me up, what I have seen and experienced and who I have interacted with. From the study area, I have received information from people who have lived in different places in the country and abroad through phone interactions and meetings. I have prepared this auto ethnography article by including the social experiences of my mother who raised me and her life stories as a source of information. People are bound by the customs of society. In this auto ethnography exploring social and its associated customs, it becomes apparent that certain rituals once imbued with significance by our ancestors may how imped societal progress. While these rituals held meaning in their time, their contributed practice poses challenges to the advancement of our community. It seems that there is a need for change in the rituals that have been going on like that. There is a need for a progressive change in the traditions that are the hindrances to the development of such old societies. The conclusion of this article is that there is a need for progressive change in the old social injustices based on caste, gender and color.

Receipt of social services intervention in childhood, educational attainment and emergency hospital admissions: longitudinal analyses of national administrative health, social care, and education data in Wales, UK

BackgroundResearch consistently finds poorer health and educational outcomes for children who have experienced out-of-home care relative to the general population. Few studies have explored differences between those in care and those in receipt of intervention from social services but not in care. Children receiving social services interventions often experience Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and deprivation, which are known to negatively impact outcomes. We aimed to estimate the association of different social services interventions with educational outcomes and hospital admissions, while adjusting for ACEs and deprivation.MethodsWe linked retrospective, routinely collected administrative records from health, education, and social care to create a cohort via the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank in Wales, UK. We analysed data for children and household members (N = 30,439) across four different groups: [1] no social care intervention; [2] children in need but not in care (CIN); [3] children on the Child Protection Register but not in care (CPR); [4] children in care - i.e. removed from the family home and looked after by the local authority (CLA). Our primary outcome was education outcomes at age 16 years. Secondary outcomes were all cause emergency hospital admissions, and emergency admissions for external causes/injuries.ResultsChildren in receipt of social services intervention were more likely to not attain the expected level upon leaving statutory education at age 16 after adjusting for ACEs and other characteristics (for children who had been in out-of-home care (conditional OR: 1·76, (95%CI) 1·25 − 2·48), in need (2·51, 2·00–3·15) and those at risk (i.e., on the child protection register) (4·04, 2·44 − 6·68). For all-cause emergency admissions, all social care groups were at greater risk compared to children in the general population (children in care (conditional HR: 1·31, 1·01–1·68), children in need (1·62, 1·38 − 1·90), and children at risk (1·51, 1·11 − 2·04).ConclusionsAll groups receiving social service intervention experience poorer educational and health outcomes than peers in the general population. Children who remain with their home parents or caregivers but are identified as ‘in need’ or ‘at risk’ by social care practitioners require further research. Integrated support is needed from multiple sectors, including health, educational and social care.

Concrete Times

Our existence has become so entangled with concrete that it would be difficult to imagine life without it, though we probably should. Anthropologists recognize the part that concrete plays in mediating social relations and in shaping political subjectivities. Thinking about concrete anthropologically involves moving across multiple scales—from large infrastructure projects to modest housebuilding projects. This review asks what we might gain from a focus on this ubiquitous material. I propose that attending ethnographically to how concrete mediates social experiences across scales brings to the fore building as an activity of political, economic, social, and ecological significance. Concrete offers a lens through which to apprehend social formations and transformations as well as to examine how built forms mediate and leverage power, how space is used and claimed, and how futures are imagined and pasts remembered. I conclude with a critical reflection on the ecological implications of these concrete times.

Experiencing the Craft and Ethical Impact of Young Adult Disability Fiction

Scholars like Ria Cheyne and Sami Schalk have argued that the imaginative and ethical structures of fiction can, if effectively leveraged, provide readers a new orientation to, or understanding of, difference. Advancing recent work that identifies methods to assess the material reception of disability literature, the article demonstrates how general audiences perceive both the craft and ethical import of fiction. Beverly Butler’s 1962 novel Light a Single Candle is one example of young adult literature that has resonated with audiences over time. Literary disability studies and narrative theory clarify the range of storytelling techniques that make the novel compelling: Butler, a blind author herself, carefully creates distances among reader, narrator, and character only to close them; she uses the physical description of blind modality to represent social experience; and she installs characters that model different disability ethics. Systematically analyzing the novel’s online reviews, the article shows that audiences sense Butler’s storytelling techniques in ways that open up spaces for mindful reflection on the nature of impairment and the construction of disability.

A qualitative study of Chicago gay men and the Mpox outbreak of 2022 in the context of HIV/AIDS, PrEP, and COVID-19

During the 2022 mpox outbreak, our study conducted 30 interviews with a recruited sample of Chicago gay men (age 18+) during June-September to investigate their experiences of mpox, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19. Participants were interviewed with a semi-structured guide about gay sexual identity and social experiences; HIV/AIDS, ART, and PrEP; and COVID-19 behaviors and vaccination. All 30 interview respondents had been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and expressed minimal COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. All the men living with HIV in our study were on ART with HIV well controlled. A majority of HIV- participants (70%) were on PrEP, with participants universally aware of PrEP benefits. Additionally, most participants had already received at least one shot of the Jynneos mpox vaccine, with many interviewees enduring long lines, sometimes at multiple locations, before vaccination in primarily gay social spaces. These Chicago gay men demonstrated widespread enthusiasm for mpox vaccination as a disease prevention strategy and most of them had already been vaccinated despite significant barriers. The enthusiasm of the participants in our study emerged within a medical landscape shaped by both COVID-19 vaccination and HIV/AIDS-related health interventions including ART and PrEP, which may have helped instill increased medical trust among this population. Our study suggests that out urban gay men may comprise a distinctive minority population with increased medical trust due to specific social, sexual, and historical experiences.

Revisiting modern campuses through spaces for leisure in Izmir, Turkey

ABSTRACT Division of working and leisure spaces as an early product of modern life has still its traces on urban context. Campus spaces, not only universities, reflect such a programmed structure related to modern everyday life. This paper aims to discuss the changing relationship between working and leisure on varying campus spaces, which embrace these two essential components of modern societies. Many campuses in early Turkey follow similar modernist organisational principles in their design and performs an original path in spatial transformation. Industry, education, and public service campuses, which were established in İzmir during the 1950s, constitute the spatial framework of this paper. The paper aims to trace the leisure areas of three campuses and examine this meticulously programmed life idea under the influence of the changing leisure spatial culture in Turkey from the 1950s to today. These spaces are articulated and examined by their dwellings and social interaction spaces. Besides, the social experience and individual perspectives of campus users are documented and merged with the physical analysis of the working and leisure spaces. Discussing those examples in socio-spatial details underlines the transformation and dissolution of campus idea in urban life and exposes the unique experience of campus spaces of İzmir.

The double disadvantage faced by adolescents from low socioeconomic backgrounds with mental health problems affects earnings up to mid-life

Early childhood socioeconomic disadvantage and mental health problems are both important determinants of adult social and economic experiences, but little is known about how they interact in this respect. We aimed to assess whether poor mental health in adolescence exacerbates labour market inequalities originating from low socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood. We use a birth cohort of individuals born in 1958 in England and follow their employment experiences and cumulative earnings up to age 55. We proxy low SES in childhood with father's occupational class at the time the respondent was aged 11, and use caregiver (usually, parent) ratings of the Rutter inventory at age 16 to identify mental health problems in adolescence. We fit ordinary least squares (OLS) models to estimate the effect of growing up in a low-SES family and experiencing mental health problems (conduct or emotional problems) in adolescence on cumulative earnings (log-transformed). We use an interaction term to test whether the association between mental health problems (conduct and emotional separately) and earnings differed by socioeconomic group. Individuals who experienced conduct problems in adolescence had lower cumulative earnings and employment levels up to age of 55. Moreover, the association between mental health problems and cumulative earnings was higher among individuals who also experienced low SES in childhood. Families from a higher socioeconomic group may have more effective means to counteract the adverse impacts of adolescent mental health problems, likely due to broader access to resources, support systems and opportunities. This underscores the role of structural supports in addressing socioeconomic inequalities in mental health outcomes and their long-terms implications.