‘Days of Frustration’: A Qualitative Study of Adolescents’ Thoughts and Experiences of Schooling after Early Dropout

Abstract

School dropout increases the risk of unemployment, health problems, and disability benefits. Employing an ecological-developmental perspective, we analyzed the interviews of thirteen students from a peripheral Norwegian county, aiming to explore the possible influence of upbringing and schooling on dropout. The analysis revealed that dropout was associated with an unstable family situation, lack of structure in everyday life, unresolved complex learning difficulties, bullying, and a tough existence in a rented room. The participants conveyed a sense of defeat, frustration, and an absence of meaningful alternatives. However, two participants had actively chosen to discontinue their education; this was because they preferred work practice to allow them time to mature and re-orientate in relation to future educational and career choices. Their families and social networks contributed actively to the implementation of their future plans. The findings point to the importance of studying interventions that may prevent school dropout, and that address central factors in the process of school dropout, such as social support, academic achievement, and parental involvement.

The effect of smartphone addiction on adolescent health: the moderating effect of leisure physical activities

“…In order to test the mediating effect of loneliness in smartphone addiction on adolescents’ health and to investigate whether the mediating effect of loneliness was mediated by leisure sports activities, the analysis was conducted according to the moderated mediation test proposed by Wen Zhonglin (Xie et al, 2019 ). After standardizing the data, gender and family income were used as control variables, and the data was analyzed in combination with the SPSS macro program PROCESS 3.3 used by Hayes (Ottosen et al, 2023 ). The results are shown in Table 4 , and the effect was significant ( β = −0.13, t = −5.38, P < 0.01), indicating that the more severely smartphone dependence was, the worse the health became.…”