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This paper points out some problematic aspects of qualitative research based on interviews and uses examples from mental health. The narrative approach is explored while inquiring if the reality of life here is forced into the formula of a chronological story. The hermeneutic approach, in general, is also examined, and we ask if the reality of life in this scenario becomes caught up in a web of interpretations. Inspired by ideas from Bakhtin and phenomenology, we argue for interview-based research that stays with unresolvedness and constantly question the web of interpretations and narratives that determine our experiences. This also chimes with certain dialogical practices in mental health in which tolerance of uncertainty is the guiding principle. Concludingly, we suggest that interview-based research could be a practice of 'un-resolving' in which researchers, together with the participants, look for cracks, contradictions, and complexities to prevent the qualitative fallacies of well-organized meanings and well-composed stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When addressed from the third-person perspective of professional and academic expertise, parents in high-conflict divorce are often described in polarized and individualized ways. This is at odds with the complex picture arising from studies exploring parents' own experience of high-conflict divorce. Inspired by the research strategy of institutional ethnography, this article explores how the work of parents in enduring post-divorce conflicts relates to particular socially organized ways of doing parenthood. It draws on interviews with 20 Norwegian mothers and fathers experiencing a high-conflict divorce situation. The analysis connects parents' experiences to dominant discourses about symmetrically shared parenting and the importance of parental devotion vis-a-vis their children. Through authoritative documents like laws, policies, and professional guidelines, these discourses are materially present in parents' everyday lives, contributing to the coordination of experience. The findings show how parents' struggles to care for their children in accordance with norms for good parenting can sometimes work to keep conflicts alive. It is suggested that organizing policy and professional responses around objectified understandings of post-divorce conflict as instances of parental neglect risks distancing policy and helping initiatives from the experiences of those parents they are meant to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on findings from an empirical study based on qualitative interviews with Norwegian parents identified as part of a high-conflict divorce situation and interviews with caseworkers from a child welfare service. The site of study is an institutional circuit of concern, assessment, and referral involving the court, child welfare services, and a public family therapy service. The paper draws on the social ontology and analytic concepts of institutional ethnography and adopts parents' standpoint to explore how their knowledge and experience are shaped through encounters with professionals in the process of being identified and assessed as a high-conflict divorce case. The focus on people's doings and their expert knowledge about their doings sets institutional ethnographic research apart from more conventional forms of qualitative inquiry that focus on informants' inner experience. The paper highlights how a generalized professional discourse seems to permeate the work that parents and caseworkers jointly engage in, sometimes subsuming the knowledge and experience of those involved. When the issues of life as subjectively known and experienced are different from those of the institutional discourse, there is a danger that what is important to those whose lives they concern escapes the dialogue between parents and professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we challenge the concept of the therapeutic relationship as an operationalisable entity. In contrast to this idea, we introduce Alphonso Lingis' concept of community, and his distinction between the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common. This is done through speculative analysis of a transcribed sequence from a research interview with a boy who speaks about his experiences of receiving mental health care. This boy and his family were helped through a network-oriented, dialogical approach. In the sequence highlighted here, the boy speaks of the significance of a particular mental health practitioner. The boy expresses appreciation for the help he has received, yet it is difficult to translate the boy's utterances into meaningful professional jargon. Although the paper makes use of an actual sequence from a research interview, the argument is not empirical in nature. The purpose of the paper is to elaborate on theory, and to examine some possible consequences for future practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the first Norwegian standardization of an assessment tool specifically designed to measure childhood conduct problems. Norwegian norms for the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) based on data obtained from a random population sample ( N= 4063) of children in the age range of 4 to 12 years are presented. The sample was drawn from rural and urban areas within three Norwegian town districts. Clinical and research advantages of having a properly standardized assessment tool for this specific subclass of childhood psychiatric problems in Norway are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: To test the classical conditioning and expectancy theories of placebo effects. Objective: Two experiments investigated whether administration of caffeine-associated stimuli elicited conditioned arousal, and whether information that a drink contained or did not contain caffeine modulated arousal. Method: Experiment 1 (n=21) used a 2 Caffeine (0 and 2 mg/kg) × 2 Solution (Coffee, Juice) × 2 Information (Told caffeine, Told not-caffeine) within-subjects design. Experiment 2 (n=48) used a 2 Solution (Coffee, Orange juice) × 3 Information (Told caffeine, Told not-caffeine, No information) between-subjects design. Indexes of arousal were skin conductance responses and levels, startle eyeblink reflexes, cardiovascular measures, and the Bond and Lader 1974 mood scale. Results: Caffeine-associated stimuli increased alertness, contentedness and skin conductance levels, and information that the drink contained caffeine decreased calmness in Experiment 1. However, unexpected information about the caffeine content of the drink, and the order of the conditions, could have masked some effects of the experimental manipulations. Experiment 2 followed up this hypothesis. The results showed a conditioned increase in startle eyeblink reflexes, and that caffeine-associated stimuli together with information that the drink contained caffeine increased contentedness. Conclusions: Caffeine-associated stimuli increased arousal, and information about the content of the drink modulated arousal in the direction indicated by the information. Thus, both the classical conditioning and expectancy theories of placebo effects received support, and placebo effects were strongest when both conditioned responses and expectancy-based responses acted in the same direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]