Improving school effectiveness is a priority for many countries. The Swedish instrument "Pedagogical and Social Climate in School" (PESOC) has been widely used for measurement of school improvement. Since pedagogical leadership is an important component of school effectiveness, this study aimed to describe the psychometric properties of…

Differential item functioning (DIF) for an item between two groups is present if, for the same person location on a variable, persons from different groups have different expected values for their responses. Applying only to dichotomously scored items in the popular Mantel-Haenszel (MH) method for detecting DIF in which persons are classified by…

Aim: This study investigates the association between two types of social relations during leisure time (to parents and peers) and the frequency of alcohol use among Swedish adolescents, taking possible interaction effects into account. Methods: The data were collected during the 1995-2005 time period by using a questionnaire handed out in the…

The current study examined concordance and discordance between a measure of bullying and measures of peer aggression with respect to the number of students identified as victims. Swedish adolescents (N = 1,760) completed a web-based questionnaire. A measure of bullying and measures of peer aggression were compared in order to elucidate the unique…

The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of the prerequisites for tobacco prevention. The situations before and after the introduction of a minimum-age law were compared with respect to opportunities for adolescents to buy tobacco, and to attitudes towards the law. Data were collected in 1996 and 2000 with a questionnaire among all…