Comparing the Social Images of Youth In and Out of Residential Care

Abstract

The literature indicates that youths in residential care have been associated with negative social images. However, there have been few studies focused on these social images, specifically, comparing them with the images of youths in normative contexts. To address this issue, we conducted two studies comparing the social images people have about youths in residential to those they hold about youths living out of care. Both studies were conducted in Portugal: Study 1 explores these images through an open-ended questionnaire. Study 2 examines these images with a quantitative instrument. Overall, the results indicate that the perception about youths in residential care was more negative than the perception about youths out of care. Additionally, the first study probed the effect of socioeconomic status of the youths on the social images held about them and the second examined the role of the respondents' professional contact with youth in care population on these social images. The implications of the social images people have about youth in residential care for the research and intervention towards the wellbeing of this population are discussed.

How Does Mothering Look Like: A Multidimensional Approach to Maternal Cognitive Representations

“…According to linguistic criteria, similar words (including singular and plural, feminine and masculine, different verb tenses and different grammatical forms) were aggregated. The attribute form with the highest frequency was used to name each aggregate of similar words in data analysis; in the case of attributes with the same frequency, the singular and feminine attribute were selected (for a similar strategy, see Calheiros, Garrido, Lopes, & Patrício, 2015; Garrido, Patrício, Calheiros, & Lopes, 2016; Lopes, Calheiros, Patrício, & Garrido, 2017). Following this procedure, we obtained 217 parenting-related attributes in the first list, and additional 210 positive and 220 negative parenting-related attributes in the second list.…”

Development and validation of a Social Images Evaluation Questionnaire for youth in residential care

“…Note that among these attributes, a large majority had already been identified in the literature as corresponding to the social image of youth in residential care (cf., [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]), but also to the attributes that youth in general identified in self-description tasks (i.e., “friend”, “intelligent”, “nice”, and “hard-working”) (cf., [ 31 ]).…”

“…Literature has been suggesting to the fact that residential care is associated to an overall negative social image with severe consequences for youth well-being and identity [ 22 , 52 , 53 ]. However, and to the best of our knowledge, there are no measurement instruments tailored to analyze in a quantitative and systematic way the social image of youth in residential care.…”

“…The few studies addressing the social images of youth in residential care indicate that they are perceived in a negative way, or are target of a negative social image [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. Indeed, the results of discriminant analyses reported by Calheiros et al [ 20 ] indicate that children and youth in residential care were mainly described with negative attributes, while residential care institutions were mainly described with positive attributes.…”

“…The social images of children and youth in residential care include different dimensions, namely behavioral (e.g., aggressive, individuals in risk, marginal, problematic, hostile, contemptuous), emotional (e.g., deprived, sad, rebel, sensitive), social (e.g., abandoned, lone, introverted), physical (e.g., dirty), cognitive, scholar or professional (e.g., insecure, failed, unqualified, with weak academic competences), and economical (e.g., poor) [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. Institutionalization also appears associated with a negative social image, which in turn exerts a strong impact on well-being and identity of youth in residential care [ 21 ].…”