Strangers, Powerless and Hopeless in their Own Town: Alienation among Adolescents in Times of Recession

Abstract

The present work aims to make use of a national survey in order to propose an analysis of all the available indicators theoretically associated with the construct of alienation, and then validate a tool enabling not only to estimate alienation and its components in Portuguese adolescents, but also to identify associations regarding other demographic variables present in the survey. Participants were a group of adolescents that answered the Portuguese survey of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC). The Portuguese survey included students from grades 6, 8 and 10 within the public education system. For this study, only adolescents from the 8th and 10th grades were included in the sample, comprising 3494 students. The results show a good adequacy of the CFA model. This model has retained 4 scale proposals - Social Isolation, Normlessness, Powerlessness and Meaninglessness, and a full scale – Alienation. The good fit of the data allowed the use of the scale and its sub-scales in the study of alienation among adolescents, enabling researchers to identify demographic correlates and to propose tailored preventive actions because in fact some gender, grade (as a proxy for age) and socio economic status differences are highlighted.