Christian Kroll
Biographic Data
| ID | 3588085 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christian Kroll |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christian |
| FAMILY NAME | Kroll |
| SIGNATURE | KROLL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9954-6123 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 156 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Open letter
Despite growing investment in restoration, weak accountability and poor biodiversity monitoring mean many projects fail to achieve ecological recovery. The Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) offers a practical way to ensure that restoration finance delivers measurable gains for nature. By providing independent, site-based verification and engaging local experts, TGBS builds trust, transparency and equity in restoration practice. Its adoption cou…
Transformation of legal instruments in EU environmental law
Poor Children in Our School? Child Poverty‐Related Beliefs and Practices Among Primary School‐Based Professionals in Finland
Despite being viewed as highly equal welfare societies, child poverty remains an unsolved problem in the Nordic countries. This article investigates the various types of institutionalised, underlying beliefs about child poverty held by professionals working within the Finnish primary school system, and how these assumptions shape school practices related to equality issues. Based on focus group interviews with 34 school‐based professionals, the s…
Wind of change? Social work students’ policy engagement and career preferences in Finland
Although a general mission of social workers is to advance social justice, it has been claimed that many social workers, including those studying to become social workers, have a rather weak commitment to policy engagement (PE). It has been a common assumption that Nordic social workers lack a tradition of PE due to their primary role as public employees in the comprehensive Nordic welfare state. We address these topics by empirically analyzing F…
What works? Researching participants’ experiences of a social policy RCT through qualitative interviews
Increasingly, evidence-based policymaking, in the form of randomized control trials (RCTs) in particular, are advocated as a means for studying the effects of planned social policy measures. Additionally, a Finnish basic income experiment was conducted in 2017–2018 as an RCT as a means of exploring alternative policy solutions, which gained widespread national and international political, media and scholarly attention. Despite the popularity of R…
A Common Purpose? Social Work Students’ Social Justice Related Views in Finland and the island of Ireland
Exploring social work students’ views to understand how equipped they are to pursue the social justice mission of the profession should be of central academic and practical interest. There are, however, surprisingly few empirical studies focussing on social work students’ views on social justice-related issues from a comparative viewpoint. Such knowledge is thought to be of a wider international interest from a number of perspectives, including s…
Findings from a European, cross-national project study on service user participation
This article reports on a European project that sought to explore the relationships between social work and service user participation, using a five-country (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland and Portugal) case study approach. It revealed areas of comparison and contrast depending upon respective histories of social work development, organisation, education and research that determined forms of service user participation. It is argued tha…
Poverty constructions and discursive strategies employed by participants in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment
In this article, we examine how eighty-one participants in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment discursively construct and make sense of their own and others’ poverty in face-to-face interviews. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), we identified three discursive strategies the interviewees use to engage with and challenge culturally dominant poverty discourses. First, poverty was constructed as a tragic experience attributed to external causes…
Reflexive professionalisation in social work practice development, research, and education
This paper examines how the renewed critical emphasis on reflexiveprofessionalisation in thefield of social work can take into account thechallenges regarding the politics of democratic participation of serviceusers as citizens while working towards social justice. Our contributionis based on thefindings of a collaborative European research projectinvolving researchers, students, public service organisations, service userorganisations, and educat…
Sustainable Development Report 2022
The Sustainable Development Report 2022 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. In a context of multiple crises, the report analyzes and outlines how the SDGs can be used as a roadmap for more sustainable societies by 2030 and beyond. In particular, this year's edition underlines the importance of international financing mechanism…
Sustainable Development Report 2020
The Sustainable Development Report 2020 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report shows that all countries need to strengthen the resilience of their health systems and prevention programs. Some countries have outperformed others in containing the Covid-19 pandemic, yet all remain at serious risk. The report frames the…
Experimenting with Unconditional Basic Income
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Sustainable Development Report 2021
The Sustainable Development Report 2021 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report analyses and outlines what needs to happen for the Decade of Action and Delivery of the SDGs. In order to build back better following the Covid-19 pandemic, especially low-income countries will need increased fiscal space. The report fram…
Sustainable Development and Populism
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides the framework that all United Nations (UN) member states have pledged to fulfill. The achievement of this agenda crucially depends on whether humankind will be able to maximize synergies and resolve existing trade-offs between the SDGs. We provide the first analysis of future interactions for projected SDG trends until 2030 within and between goals, and we analyze how trade…
On the changing frontline of welfare delivery
Frontline workers often use discretion when implementing rules. Thus, their own views can be expected to influence client treatment and decisions. We investigate how different groups of frontline workers, with different degrees and types of professional training and within different institutional settings, perceive social assistance and social assistance recipients, focusing on workers’ (N=2124) views on overuse, laziness, shame and underuse. The…
The perceived legitimacy of a basic income among Finnish food aid recipients
Discussions on the pros and cons of a basic income (BI) have remained mainly at the ‘systemic level’. Based on survey and interview data, this study provides a ‘bottom‐up’ perspective on the legitimacy of the idea of a basic income among people queuing in breadlines in Helsinki in late 2016, who are assumed to be affected positively by this benefit. While general support for the idea is high, not everyone supports an unconditional BI. Despite the…
National baselines for the Sustainable Development Goals assessed in the SDG Index and Dashboards
The Sustainable Development Goals map out a broad spectrum of objectives. Analytical tools in form of the Index and Dashboards provide a starting point to set national baselines, and allow comparison of the SDGs with other indices of well-being. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — agreed in 2015 by all 193 member states of the United Nations and complemented by commitments made in the Paris Agreement — map out a broad spectrum of economic,…
Minimal and Massive! Politicians’ Views on the Media’s Political Agenda-Setting Power Revisited
Different methods have yielded different results regarding the media’s political agenda-setting power: Time-series studies comparing agendas in the media and politics have pointed to a minimal and surveys of politicians to massive media influence. Inspired by these findings and the suggested explanations for them, this article studies in detail politicians’ views on the media’s political agenda-setting power: How do politicians assess media’s pow…
What explains frontline workers' views on poverty? A comparison of three types of welfare sector institutions
The study analysed views on poverty among F innish frontline workers in three welfare sector institutions. Two different institutional logics, universal and selective, and two sectors, the public and the voluntary, were represented. A nationwide survey among social security officials, municipal social workers and diaconal workers was utilised (N = 2,124). The methods applied included factor analysis, the examination of means and multivariate anal…
Job Stress among Social Workers
Little is known about social workers' job stress in a comparative sense, and whether job stress might negatively affect their views of clients within the welfare system. We examine these issues on the basis of cross-sectional survey data collected from professional social workers in four Nordic countries that have similar welfare systems and where workers engage in similar tasks. Job stress is measured using two indicators: workload and role conf…
Active patients in rural African health care
We introduce the 'active patient' model, which we claim is a better way to describe health-seeking behaviour in low-income countries. Active patients do not automatically seek health care at the closest or lowest cost provider, but rather seek high-quality care (even at higher cost) when they estimate that such care will significantly improves outcomes. We show how the active patient can improve his or her health even when access to adequate qual…
Towards a Sociology of Happiness
This article examines what can be the contribution of Sociology to the 'new science of happiness', and what can such happiness studies contribute to Sociology? It does so by presenting the example of a quantitative analysis of European Social Survey data for the UK on social capital and life satisfaction by age. It reveals heterogeneity in the relationship between social capital and SWB by age with, for instance, socialising being more strongly a…
Social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty in the Nordic countries
Street-level bureaucrats have been given an increasing role in the implementation of policies aimed at the poor. The article analyses: (1) how social workers in the Nordic countries explain the causes of poverty and whether there are variations between countries in social workers’ perceptions; and (2) the nature of the impact, if any, of various individual- and municipal-level factors on social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty. Surve…
Just a perfect day? Developing a happiness optimised day schedule
Different Things Make Different People Happy
Do Structural Contexts Matter? Macro-sociological Factors and Popular Attitudes towards Public Welfare Services
In various earlier studies focusing on support for the welfare state, attitudinal differences have been explained by factors linked to individual social characteristics of respondents. This study focuses mainly on how macro-sociological variables influence attitudes towards the public service system in Finland. An attempt is made to investigate whether differences between municipalities in public-policy measures, political climate and the economi…
Social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty in the Nordic countries
Street-level bureaucrats have been given an increasing role in the implementation of policies aimed at the poor. The article analyses: (1) how social workers in the Nordic countries explain the causes of poverty and whether there are variations between countries in social workers’ perceptions; and (2) the nature of the impact, if any, of various individual- and municipal-level factors on social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty. Surve…
A Happy Nation? Opportunities and Challenges of Using Subjective Indicators in Policymaking
Job Stress among Social Workers
Little is known about social workers' job stress in a comparative sense, and whether job stress might negatively affect their views of clients within the welfare system. We examine these issues on the basis of cross-sectional survey data collected from professional social workers in four Nordic countries that have similar welfare systems and where workers engage in similar tasks. Job stress is measured using two indicators: workload and role conf…
Active patients in rural African health care
We introduce the 'active patient' model, which we claim is a better way to describe health-seeking behaviour in low-income countries. Active patients do not automatically seek health care at the closest or lowest cost provider, but rather seek high-quality care (even at higher cost) when they estimate that such care will significantly improves outcomes. We show how the active patient can improve his or her health even when access to adequate qual…
Social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed in the Nordic countries
Kallio J, Blomberg H, Kroll C. Social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed in the Nordic countries In recent decades, municipal social workers have become the implementers of new types of social policy measures aimed at activating the unemployed. These policies put a greater emphasis on the individual's own responsibility for being unemployed. Little is known, however, about how social workers view the unemployed – one factor that might infl…
The perceived legitimacy of a basic income among Finnish food aid recipients
Discussions on the pros and cons of a basic income (BI) have remained mainly at the ‘systemic level’. Based on survey and interview data, this study provides a ‘bottom‐up’ perspective on the legitimacy of the idea of a basic income among people queuing in breadlines in Helsinki in late 2016, who are assumed to be affected positively by this benefit. While general support for the idea is high, not everyone supports an unconditional BI. Despite the…
Minimal and Massive! Politicians’ Views on the Media’s Political Agenda-Setting Power Revisited
Different methods have yielded different results regarding the media’s political agenda-setting power: Time-series studies comparing agendas in the media and politics have pointed to a minimal and surveys of politicians to massive media influence. Inspired by these findings and the suggested explanations for them, this article studies in detail politicians’ views on the media’s political agenda-setting power: How do politicians assess media’s pow…
Sustainable Development and Populism
What explains frontline workers' views on poverty? A comparison of three types of welfare sector institutions
The study analysed views on poverty among F innish frontline workers in three welfare sector institutions. Two different institutional logics, universal and selective, and two sectors, the public and the voluntary, were represented. A nationwide survey among social security officials, municipal social workers and diaconal workers was utilised (N = 2,124). The methods applied included factor analysis, the examination of means and multivariate anal…
Towards a Sociology of Happiness
This article examines what can be the contribution of Sociology to the 'new science of happiness', and what can such happiness studies contribute to Sociology? It does so by presenting the example of a quantitative analysis of European Social Survey data for the UK on social capital and life satisfaction by age. It reveals heterogeneity in the relationship between social capital and SWB by age with, for instance, socialising being more strongly a…
Nordic social workers' assessments of child welfare problems and interventions
In international comparison, the Nordic countries are characterised by similar policy goals and institutional contexts in child welfare. But is it also possible to talk about a common Nordic model in child welfare at the level of social work practices? And if so, to what extent do the results match the ideal model of ‘preventive and family service oriented Nordic child welfare’? This article investigates similarities and variations in Nordic soci…
Poverty constructions and discursive strategies employed by participants in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment
In this article, we examine how eighty-one participants in the Finnish Basic Income Experiment discursively construct and make sense of their own and others’ poverty in face-to-face interviews. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), we identified three discursive strategies the interviewees use to engage with and challenge culturally dominant poverty discourses. First, poverty was constructed as a tragic experience attributed to external causes…
Just a perfect day? Developing a happiness optimised day schedule
Socialklass och attityderna till nedskärningar i välfärdssystemet i Finland
Social class and attitude towards cuts in the welfare system in FinlandIn various earlier studies focusing on the expansion of the welfare state social class has proven to be of great significance in explaining attitudinal cleavages among citizens. This study focuses mainly on how social class influences attitudes towards cuts in three main types of welfare programmes in Finland, namely eamings-related and universal cash benefits and also univers…
Socialklass och attityderna till nedskärningar i välfärdssystemet i Finland
Social class and attitude towards cuts in the welfare system in FinlandIn various earlier studies focusing on the expansion of the welfare state social class has proven to be of great significance in explaining attitudinal cleavages among citizens. This study focuses mainly on how social class influences attitudes towards cuts in three main types of welfare programmes in Finland, namely eamings-related and universal cash benefits and also univers…
Do Structural Contexts Matter? Macro-sociological Factors and Popular Attitudes towards Public Welfare Services
In various earlier studies focusing on support for the welfare state, attitudinal differences have been explained by factors linked to individual social characteristics of respondents. This study focuses mainly on how macro-sociological variables influence attitudes towards the public service system in Finland. An attempt is made to investigate whether differences between municipalities in public-policy measures, political climate and the economi…
Different Things Make Different People Happy
Social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed in the Nordic countries
Kallio J, Blomberg H, Kroll C. Social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed in the Nordic countries In recent decades, municipal social workers have become the implementers of new types of social policy measures aimed at activating the unemployed. These policies put a greater emphasis on the individual's own responsibility for being unemployed. Little is known, however, about how social workers view the unemployed – one factor that might infl…
Nordic social workers' assessments of child welfare problems and interventions
In international comparison, the Nordic countries are characterised by similar policy goals and institutional contexts in child welfare. But is it also possible to talk about a common Nordic model in child welfare at the level of social work practices? And if so, to what extent do the results match the ideal model of ‘preventive and family service oriented Nordic child welfare’? This article investigates similarities and variations in Nordic soci…
Social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty in the Nordic countries
Street-level bureaucrats have been given an increasing role in the implementation of policies aimed at the poor. The article analyses: (1) how social workers in the Nordic countries explain the causes of poverty and whether there are variations between countries in social workers’ perceptions; and (2) the nature of the impact, if any, of various individual- and municipal-level factors on social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty. Surve…
Just a perfect day? Developing a happiness optimised day schedule
A Happy Nation? Opportunities and Challenges of Using Subjective Indicators in Policymaking
Active patients in rural African health care
We introduce the 'active patient' model, which we claim is a better way to describe health-seeking behaviour in low-income countries. Active patients do not automatically seek health care at the closest or lowest cost provider, but rather seek high-quality care (even at higher cost) when they estimate that such care will significantly improves outcomes. We show how the active patient can improve his or her health even when access to adequate qual…
Towards a Sociology of Happiness
This article examines what can be the contribution of Sociology to the 'new science of happiness', and what can such happiness studies contribute to Sociology? It does so by presenting the example of a quantitative analysis of European Social Survey data for the UK on social capital and life satisfaction by age. It reveals heterogeneity in the relationship between social capital and SWB by age with, for instance, socialising being more strongly a…
Minimal and Massive! Politicians’ Views on the Media’s Political Agenda-Setting Power Revisited
Different methods have yielded different results regarding the media’s political agenda-setting power: Time-series studies comparing agendas in the media and politics have pointed to a minimal and surveys of politicians to massive media influence. Inspired by these findings and the suggested explanations for them, this article studies in detail politicians’ views on the media’s political agenda-setting power: How do politicians assess media’s pow…
What explains frontline workers' views on poverty? A comparison of three types of welfare sector institutions
The study analysed views on poverty among F innish frontline workers in three welfare sector institutions. Two different institutional logics, universal and selective, and two sectors, the public and the voluntary, were represented. A nationwide survey among social security officials, municipal social workers and diaconal workers was utilised (N = 2,124). The methods applied included factor analysis, the examination of means and multivariate anal…
Job Stress among Social Workers
Little is known about social workers' job stress in a comparative sense, and whether job stress might negatively affect their views of clients within the welfare system. We examine these issues on the basis of cross-sectional survey data collected from professional social workers in four Nordic countries that have similar welfare systems and where workers engage in similar tasks. Job stress is measured using two indicators: workload and role conf…
National baselines for the Sustainable Development Goals assessed in the SDG Index and Dashboards
The Sustainable Development Goals map out a broad spectrum of objectives. Analytical tools in form of the Index and Dashboards provide a starting point to set national baselines, and allow comparison of the SDGs with other indices of well-being. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — agreed in 2015 by all 193 member states of the United Nations and complemented by commitments made in the Paris Agreement — map out a broad spectrum of economic,…
On the changing frontline of welfare delivery
Frontline workers often use discretion when implementing rules. Thus, their own views can be expected to influence client treatment and decisions. We investigate how different groups of frontline workers, with different degrees and types of professional training and within different institutional settings, perceive social assistance and social assistance recipients, focusing on workers’ (N=2124) views on overuse, laziness, shame and underuse. The…
The perceived legitimacy of a basic income among Finnish food aid recipients
Discussions on the pros and cons of a basic income (BI) have remained mainly at the ‘systemic level’. Based on survey and interview data, this study provides a ‘bottom‐up’ perspective on the legitimacy of the idea of a basic income among people queuing in breadlines in Helsinki in late 2016, who are assumed to be affected positively by this benefit. While general support for the idea is high, not everyone supports an unconditional BI. Despite the…
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides the framework that all United Nations (UN) member states have pledged to fulfill. The achievement of this agenda crucially depends on whether humankind will be able to maximize synergies and resolve existing trade-offs between the SDGs. We provide the first analysis of future interactions for projected SDG trends until 2030 within and between goals, and we analyze how trade…
Sustainable Development and Populism
Sustainable Development Report 2020
The Sustainable Development Report 2020 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report shows that all countries need to strengthen the resilience of their health systems and prevention programs. Some countries have outperformed others in containing the Covid-19 pandemic, yet all remain at serious risk. The report frames the…
Experimenting with Unconditional Basic Income
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Sustainable Development Report 2021
The Sustainable Development Report 2021 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The report analyses and outlines what needs to happen for the Decade of Action and Delivery of the SDGs. In order to build back better following the Covid-19 pandemic, especially low-income countries will need increased fiscal space. The report fram…
Sustainable Development Report 2022
The Sustainable Development Report 2022 features the SDG Index and Dashboards, the first and widely used tool to assess country performance on the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. In a context of multiple crises, the report analyzes and outlines how the SDGs can be used as a roadmap for more sustainable societies by 2030 and beyond. In particular, this year's edition underlines the importance of international financing mechanism…
Reflexive professionalisation in social work practice development, research, and education
This paper examines how the renewed critical emphasis on reflexiveprofessionalisation in thefield of social work can take into account thechallenges regarding the politics of democratic participation of serviceusers as citizens while working towards social justice. Our contributionis based on thefindings of a collaborative European research projectinvolving researchers, students, public service organisations, service userorganisations, and educat…
Wind of change? Social work students’ policy engagement and career preferences in Finland
Although a general mission of social workers is to advance social justice, it has been claimed that many social workers, including those studying to become social workers, have a rather weak commitment to policy engagement (PE). It has been a common assumption that Nordic social workers lack a tradition of PE due to their primary role as public employees in the comprehensive Nordic welfare state. We address these topics by empirically analyzing F…
What works? Researching participants’ experiences of a social policy RCT through qualitative interviews
Increasingly, evidence-based policymaking, in the form of randomized control trials (RCTs) in particular, are advocated as a means for studying the effects of planned social policy measures. Additionally, a Finnish basic income experiment was conducted in 2017–2018 as an RCT as a means of exploring alternative policy solutions, which gained widespread national and international political, media and scholarly attention. Despite the popularity of R…
Political science (24 works) · Economics (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (10 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Law (8 works)