This issue of Nordic Psychology has a number of really important and interesting articles to be read during the warm and rainy Nordic summer. The articles cover important and interesting themes such as sexual abuse cases, depression and anxiety, WAIS-IV short form, motivational climate and evolutionary emotion theory.
In the first article of this issue “Children's testimonies: What influences prosecutions and convictions in sexual abuse cases?” Linzi Margaret Trosh, Bjarki Thor Sigvardsson, Thorbjorg Sveinsdottir, Haukur Freyr Gylfason and Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson examine which factors regarding children’s testimony, at Barnahús in Iceland, influence prosecution and conviction of alleged sex offenders. The sample consisted of 542 cases of children interviewed between 1998 and 2012. The results show that cases were more likely to be prosecuted when a child gave a detailed description of the alleged abuse. Cases were more likely to be convicted if the alleged abuse had occurred multiple times or had lasted more than a year. In the second article of this issue “Prevalence estimates of depression and anxiety disorders among Icelandic university students when taking functional impairment into account” Ingvar Eysteinsson, Saevar Mar Gustavsson and Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson examined whether adding assessment of functional impairment to symptoms of specific mental disorders would have any effect on estimated prevalence of mental disorders in a non-clinical sample of university students in Iceland. A self-report measure was designed to assess the subjective functional impairment of anxiety, depression and stress in students’ everyday life. The results suggested that the addition of functional impairment measure lends a context to the results of the symptom-specific measures and can provide a more accurate estimation of mental health problems of university students than symptoms self-report measures alone. In the third article of this issue “WAIS-IV short form applied to a mixed neurological Swedish clinical sample” Maria Lindau, Milena Lundberg and Mats Najström studied the degree of conformity between the Scandinavian adaptation of the WAIS-IV and a short form of this scale (SF) in a mixed sample of neurological diagnoses. The results revealed several mismatches between the SF and the WAIS-IV, except for the MS and traumatic brain tumor group, there is a lack of interchangeability between these two sets of tests. Thus, generally the SF cannot be recommended as a substitute for the WAIS-IV in this type of mixed Swedish neurological sample. The small sample sizes make the generalizability of this study limited. In the fourth article of this issue “Orientation and motivational climate in elite handball players: Multivariate modeling of performance” Hafrún Kristjánsdóttir, Ásrún Matthíasdóttir and Jose M. Saavedra aimed to analyse goal orientation and motivational climate in elite handball players as functions of age and gender; and construct a multivariate model explaining handball performance from a motivational perspective (orientation and climate). The participants were 174 national team handball players. The results showed that there were no age or gender differences found in goal orientation, and very few differences in motivational climate. Except for the women's U19, U17, and U15 teams, it was possible to predict the performance level (starters and non-starters) in the different age and gender groups, achieving correct classification. The two variables that were repeated most often (thrice) in the models were ego orientation and task cooperative learning. In the fifth and final article of this issue “Status, Pride, and Educational Motivation – understanding differences in attitudes to education from the perspective of evolutionary emotion theory” Martin Wolgast, Sami Ajdahi, Erik Hansson and Sima Wolgast suggested that the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology, in particular theories and models relating to social status and pride, can be used to further our understanding of educational motivation. The assumption of the study was that the desire for social recognition and high status is a universal human phenomenon. Based on this, the article suggested that differences in educational motivation among high school students would be related to differences in the extent to which one sees academic achievements as a viable path to social status and source of pride. The study examined this topic using a cross-sectional design in a sample of high school students. In general, the results provided support for the hypothesis that status and pride are reliably related to educational motivation in high school students.
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