Thoroddur Bjarnason
Biographic Data
| ID | 75559 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thoroddur Bjarnason |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thoroddur |
| FAMILY NAME | Bjarnason |
| SIGNATURE | BJARNASON T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Akureyri |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1400-231X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 528 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Personality and the “Social Cure”
This work integrates personality theory with the Social Identity Approach to Health (SIAH), examining the interplay between personality, local community group identification, perceived support, and well-being. Three studies investigated: (a) latent personality profiles based on the five-factor model ( N = 49,692); (b) the relationships between local community identification, perceived support, and well-being across personality profiles ( N = 1,25…
From City Lights to Country Nights? The Long-Term Effects of Gossip in Rural Communities on Rural Return Migration Preferences and Intentions
This study explores the role of gossip in rural communities as a barrier to rural return migration. Previous research indicates that perceptions of social control and limited tolerance for diversity diminish residential satisfaction, especially among young women and sexual minorities, and that perceptions of gossip predict migration intentions among both women and men. Our study focuses on the long-term effects of gossip-related out-migration fro…
Closest family in the household or in the community? The role of family in residential satisfaction among intended stayers in Iceland
The salience of family in residential satisfaction and staying in rural communities has been well established. However, the relative importance family in the households and wider networks of family ties remains unclear, as well as the extent to which such associations can be found across the urban–rural continuum. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role of family in residential satisfaction and residential decision‐maki…
Migration and partisan identification as British Unionists or Irish Nationalists in Northern Ireland
The notion that mobility weakens collective norms and increases tolerance has a long pedigree in sociology. In this article, we examine the association of migration with partisan identification as British Unionists or Irish Nationalists in Northern Ireland, a region where the overlap of opposing religious and national identities is reflected in the residential segregation of its population. In representative samples of the population, we find tha…
Sexual orientation and migration intentions among rural, exurban and urban adolescents in Iceland
Rural areas have often been assumed to be somewhat hostile territory for sexual minorities. As a result, moving to an urban area may be an integral part of "coming out" for those living in a rural area. However, surprisingly few quantitative studies have examined the level of rural-to-urban migration intent among sexual minorities. In this study, we examined the migration expectations of adolescents in Iceland, a country characterised by a heavy …
Exploring population redistribution at sub-municipal levels – Microurbanisation and messy migration in Sweden's high North
To contribute to more balanced perspectives on sub-municipal population change in sparsely populated areas (SPAs), this paper closely examines a local pocket of growth in a shrinking Northern Swedish municipality. Integrating Swedish register data with in-depth qualitative insights, the geographic study examines patterns and processes of uneven local population dynamics linked to life course migration. This is done through a socio-spatial cluster…
Individual residential mobility, immobility, and political attitudes
One explanation of the results of the UK EU Referendum and the US Presidential Election in 2016 has been as a triumph of citizens of ‘somewhere’—localised and rooted—over the cosmopolitan and spatially mobile citizens of ‘anywhere’, placing residential mobility and its effects on political attitudes at the heart of debates about the causes of populist voting. This paper contributes to these debates by using Understanding Society 1 to examine how …
The impact of school bullying on adolescent migration expectations in Iceland
Adolescent migration expectations are shaped by various background characteristics, social relations, and lifestyle considerations. However, the impact of negative social experiences in adolescent society on migration expectations received limited attention. Research on the social consequences of school bullying has nevertheless demonstrated that bullying often leads to social withdrawal and place avoidance. In this study, we examine the potentia…
What's love got to do with it? Love-life gossip and migration intentions in rural Iceland
At the intersection of urbanisation and counterurbanisation in rural space
Is internal migration declining in Iceland? Intensities, geographical patterns and population composition 1986–2017
The Nordic countries have higher rates of internal migration than most other Western societies and have not always shared in the declines noted in other countries. This paper examines migration in Iceland during the period 1986–2017 to add to the wider international literature on migration trends. Compared with its Nordic neighbours, Iceland has the highest rates of internal migration and currently also the greatest porosity in terms of internati…
Geography, psychology and the ‘Big Five’ personality traits
Personality, as measured by the ‘Big Five’ dimensions of agreeableness, openness, extroversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness, has been explored in the social psychological literature as a predictor of migration but so far has received very little attention in the geographical literature, which is surprising given its predictive importance and also evidence that the selectivity of migration shapes area personality profiles. Using the Understa…
Spatial mobility and tolerance towards immigrants
While the profound effects of spatial mobility on social structures and patterns of interactions have long been recognized, the association of mobility experiences and tolerance towards immigrants has received limited attention. In this paper, we examine such patterns in Iceland, a country with a long history of emigration and return migration of the local population but a recent surge in international immigration. We find in-migrants and locals …
The Problem with Low-Prevalence of Bullying
This paper tests the hypothesis of whether being bullied in an environment where bullying is infrequent decreases adolescents' life satisfaction. Analyses were based on the international standard questionnaire from the 2005/2006 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study (HBSC). The sample included answers from 183,736 children in 35 Western, industrialized countries. Our results show that the negative effects of being bullied on the life sat…
The Effects of Regional and Distance Education on the Supply of Qualified Teachers in Rural Iceland
Difficulties in recruiting qualified teachers have been traced to insufficient services and amenities in rural areas, an urban emphasis in teacher education, few local students becoming teachers and a lack of teacher mobility. This study maps the mobility of recently graduated teachers in urban, exurban, micropolitan and other rural areas of Iceland. The graduation rate of teachers was found to be higher in rural than urban areas, yet rural teach…
University pathways of urban and rural migration in Iceland
The effects of road infrastructure improvement on work travel in Northern Iceland
Adolescent Migration Intentions and Population Change
Prior research has demonstrated that migration intentions are a moderate to strong predictor of individual-level migration across a wide range of countries, but their value for predicting community-level population change remains unclear. Analyses of census data 1972-2012 and a population survey of Icelandic adolescents in 1992 show that each percentage point difference in adolescent migration intentions is associated with 1.36 per cent change in…
Cross-National Variation in Socioeconomic Status and Delinquency
This research examined cross-national differences in the association between social class and delinquency. The poverty hypothesis expects socioeconomic disadvantage to exert a causal influence on delinquent behavior. This expectation implies that the individual-level association between family SES and delinquent offending will be attenuated at increased levels of collective social protection. The social selection perspective also assumes a negati…
Life Satisfaction Among Children in Different Family Structures
This paper examines differences in life satisfaction among children in different family structures in 36 western, industrialised countries ( n = 184 496). Children living with both biological parents reported higher levels of life satisfaction than children living with a single parent or parent–step‐parent. Children in joint physical custody reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction than their counterparts in other types of non‐in…
Early Risk Behaviors and Adolescent Injury in 25 European and North American Countries
Injury is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity among adolescents in developed countries. Jessor and Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory suggests an association between risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, drunkenness, cannabis use, and sexual intercourse) and adolescent injury. The present study examined whether early engagement in risk behaviors would predict injury at age 15. It also examined whether such associations were consistent in strength a…
The Cultural Context of Adolescent Drinking and Violence in 30 European Countries
Cross‐national variation in the effect of alcohol on adolescent violence is examined with survey data from 30 European countries. The data are analyzed using a method that makes it possible to isolate the nonspurious portion of the alcohol–violence relationship in different countries. In addition, multilevel models are used to estimate the effects of region and contextual measures of adolescent drinking on the alcohol–violence relationship. The e…
Joint Physical Custody and Communication with Parents
An increasing number of divorced parents in Western countries have joint physical custody of their children. A comparative study of children in 36 European, Mediterranean, and North American countries found that 0-4% spend about half their time in two homes. Such arrangements were virtually unknown in many Southern and Eastern European countries while they were more common than single father households in Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. Im…
Screen-based activities and physical complaints among adolescents from the Nordic countries
The observed associations indicate that time spent on screen-based activity is a contributing factor to physical complaints among young people, and that effects accumulate across different types of screen-based activities
Nordic Impact
Hate Crime Reporting as a Successful Social Movement Outcome
Variation in compliance with public policies across local settings is examined through an analysis of the number of reported hate crime incidents in United States counties. Particular attention is given to the role that activist organizations play in promoting, or impeding, compliance with public policies. Each hate crime reported to the federal government is conceptualized as a successful outcome of social movement mobilization. Drawing upon pol…
Fathering over Time
This article examines how much fathers participate in child care, an important component of domestic duties, and factors related to it. It has the advantage of longitudinal data, so that is possible to look at changes in fathers' participation and factors affecting changes and continuities over time. The data come from the 1987-1988 and 1992-1993 National Surveys of Families and Households. The sample is restricted to White, two-parent families w…
Should I stay or should I go? Migration expectations among youth in Icelandic fishing and farming communities
Modeling Durkheim on the Micro Level
Durkheim's classic theory of suicide deals with central and recurrent themes of sociological inquiry, such as the nature of social order deviance, and individual well-being. In this study, family integration and parental regulation are operationalized as independent constructs and tested in relation to anomie, suicidal suggestion, and suicidality. The authors find that integration and regulation can be meaningfully distinguished on both the theor…
Father Knows Best
Public opinion has important implications for capital punishment in the United States. Such opinion formation involves moral judgments irreducible to processing information on the administration of capital punishment or sentencing alternatives. Religious communities play a crucial role in resolving such moral dilemmas and giving meaning to available information. The Catholic Church strongly opposes capital punishment and strives to instruct lay C…
Familial and Religious Influences on Adolescent Alcohol Use
Journal Article Familial and Religious Influences on Adolescent Alcohol Use: A Multi-Level Study of Students and School Communities Get access Thoroddur Bjarnason, Thoroddur Bjarnason University at Albany, SUNY and University of Akureyri, Iceland All correspondence should be directed to Thoroddur Bjarnason, Faculty of Social Science and Law, University of Akureyri, IS-600 Akureyri, ICELAND. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this …
Joint Physical Custody and Communication with Parents
An increasing number of divorced parents in Western countries have joint physical custody of their children. A comparative study of children in 36 European, Mediterranean, and North American countries found that 0-4% spend about half their time in two homes. Such arrangements were virtually unknown in many Southern and Eastern European countries while they were more common than single father households in Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. Im…
Psychological distress during unemployment and beyond
The Influence of Social Support, Suggestion and Depression on Suicidal Behavior Among Icelandic Youth
Durkheim's treatment of the social causes of suicide has remained central to sociological theory in general and to sociological treatment of suicide in particular. The two main alternative paradigms for understanding suicide are suicide suggestion and depression. Both these paradigms are derived from 19th-century perspectives rejected by Durkheim. In this paper an attempt is made to bring them together in a single causal model of suicidal behavio…
Human Agency, Capable Guardians, and Structural Constraints
In Defense of a Folk Model
The Icelandic folk model of fishing success emphasizes the importance of the skipper. The validity of this folk model has recently been hotly debated in the social science literature. In this study an attempt is made to estimate the role of the skipper in fishing success. First, we document by a national survey the composition of the folk model of fishing success held by the Icelandic public. Second, drawing on extensive interview data we outline…
Geography, psychology and the ‘Big Five’ personality traits
Personality, as measured by the ‘Big Five’ dimensions of agreeableness, openness, extroversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness, has been explored in the social psychological literature as a predictor of migration but so far has received very little attention in the geographical literature, which is surprising given its predictive importance and also evidence that the selectivity of migration shapes area personality profiles. Using the Understa…
The Cultural Context of Adolescent Drinking and Violence in 30 European Countries
Cross‐national variation in the effect of alcohol on adolescent violence is examined with survey data from 30 European countries. The data are analyzed using a method that makes it possible to isolate the nonspurious portion of the alcohol–violence relationship in different countries. In addition, multilevel models are used to estimate the effects of region and contextual measures of adolescent drinking on the alcohol–violence relationship. The e…
Individual and Community Processes of Social Closure
While the concept of social capital has rekindled interest in fundamental issues of social inquiry, concerns have been raised regarding its definition and application in increasingly diverse topics. We address these concerns by revisiting Coleman's and Bourdieu's original ideas of the role of family and school in adolescent outcomes. Multi-level modelling reveals that controlling for individual background, parental relations and adolescent activi…
At the intersection of urbanisation and counterurbanisation in rural space
University pathways of urban and rural migration in Iceland
Parents, Religion and Perceived Social Coherence
Thoroddur Bjarnason, Parents, Religion and Perceived Social Coherence: A Durkheimian Framework of Adolescent Anomie, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 742-754
Spatial mobility and tolerance towards immigrants
While the profound effects of spatial mobility on social structures and patterns of interactions have long been recognized, the association of mobility experiences and tolerance towards immigrants has received limited attention. In this paper, we examine such patterns in Iceland, a country with a long history of emigration and return migration of the local population but a recent surge in international immigration. We find in-migrants and locals …
Anomie Among European Adolescents
Anomie is a complex, dynamic concept that refers simultaneously to a social state and an individual state of mind. Generations of sociologists have attempted to clarify, extend, and measure the concept at various levels of analysis. This article summarizes these developments around the twin concepts of exteriority and constraint. Exteriority refers to experiencing the social world as an objective, predictable reality, while constraint refers to t…
Egalitarian Attitudes Towards the Division of Household Labor Among Adolescents in Iceland
Migration Intentions of Rural Youth in Iceland
Rural communities in Iceland have been profoundly affected by natural resource management policies. As part of a regional development strategy, a large aluminum smelter and 650-megawatt hydroelectric plant were built in the sparsely populated Eastfjords region. This project was aimed at revitalizing the region and creating employment, enabling youth to stay in their home communities. Using surveys from 1992 through 2007, changes in migration expe…
Early Risk Behaviors and Adolescent Injury in 25 European and North American Countries
Injury is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity among adolescents in developed countries. Jessor and Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory suggests an association between risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, drunkenness, cannabis use, and sexual intercourse) and adolescent injury. The present study examined whether early engagement in risk behaviors would predict injury at age 15. It also examined whether such associations were consistent in strength a…
London Calling
Preferred emigration destinations among adolescents reflect images and stereotypes of other countries that continuously emerge in a multitude of local and global discourses and from concrete experiences with other countries. The affinities of Icelandic adolescents are split among the islands of the Northern Atlantic, continental Nordic countries, European core countries and North American countries. If they had to leave Iceland, however, the larg…
Is internal migration declining in Iceland? Intensities, geographical patterns and population composition 1986–2017
The Nordic countries have higher rates of internal migration than most other Western societies and have not always shared in the declines noted in other countries. This paper examines migration in Iceland during the period 1986–2017 to add to the wider international literature on migration trends. Compared with its Nordic neighbours, Iceland has the highest rates of internal migration and currently also the greatest porosity in terms of internati…
Closest family in the household or in the community? The role of family in residential satisfaction among intended stayers in Iceland
The salience of family in residential satisfaction and staying in rural communities has been well established. However, the relative importance family in the households and wider networks of family ties remains unclear, as well as the extent to which such associations can be found across the urban–rural continuum. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role of family in residential satisfaction and residential decision‐maki…
In Defense of a Folk Model
The Icelandic folk model of fishing success emphasizes the importance of the skipper. The validity of this folk model has recently been hotly debated in the social science literature. In this study an attempt is made to estimate the role of the skipper in fishing success. First, we document by a national survey the composition of the folk model of fishing success held by the Icelandic public. Second, drawing on extensive interview data we outline…
The Influence of Social Support, Suggestion and Depression on Suicidal Behavior Among Icelandic Youth
Durkheim's treatment of the social causes of suicide has remained central to sociological theory in general and to sociological treatment of suicide in particular. The two main alternative paradigms for understanding suicide are suicide suggestion and depression. Both these paradigms are derived from 19th-century perspectives rejected by Durkheim. In this paper an attempt is made to bring them together in a single causal model of suicidal behavio…
Modeling Durkheim on the Micro Level
Durkheim's classic theory of suicide deals with central and recurrent themes of sociological inquiry, such as the nature of social order deviance, and individual well-being. In this study, family integration and parental regulation are operationalized as independent constructs and tested in relation to anomie, suicidal suggestion, and suicidality. The authors find that integration and regulation can be meaningfully distinguished on both the theor…
Fathering over Time
This article examines how much fathers participate in child care, an important component of domestic duties, and factors related to it. It has the advantage of longitudinal data, so that is possible to look at changes in fathers' participation and factors affecting changes and continuities over time. The data come from the 1987-1988 and 1992-1993 National Surveys of Families and Households. The sample is restricted to White, two-parent families w…
Parents, Religion and Perceived Social Coherence
Thoroddur Bjarnason, Parents, Religion and Perceived Social Coherence: A Durkheimian Framework of Adolescent Anomie, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 742-754
Human Agency, Capable Guardians, and Structural Constraints
Nordic Impact
The sociology departments in the Nordic countries provide the institutional platform for Nordic Sociology and for the Nordic national sociological associations that form the Scandinavian Sociological Association. This paper focuses on journal articles produced by current (as of 1 January 2001) faculty of 16 of these Nordic Sociology departments in the period 1981-2000. First, we provide a brief overview of article productivity and citations to ar…
Psychological distress during unemployment and beyond
Hate Crime Reporting as a Successful Social Movement Outcome
Variation in compliance with public policies across local settings is examined through an analysis of the number of reported hate crime incidents in United States counties. Particular attention is given to the role that activist organizations play in promoting, or impeding, compliance with public policies. Each hate crime reported to the federal government is conceptualized as a successful outcome of social movement mobilization. Drawing upon pol…
Father Knows Best
Public opinion has important implications for capital punishment in the United States. Such opinion formation involves moral judgments irreducible to processing information on the administration of capital punishment or sentencing alternatives. Religious communities play a crucial role in resolving such moral dilemmas and giving meaning to available information. The Catholic Church strongly opposes capital punishment and strives to instruct lay C…
“But Everybody Does It…”
Data from the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life are used to examine how perceptions of tax evasion within a community affect community members' judgments about the moral wrongfulness of tax evasion, their fear of informal sanctions directed against such behavior, and, ultimately, their inclination to evade taxes in the future. We used multilevel linear structural equation modeling to estimate the direct and indirect effects of these variab…
Should I stay or should I go? Migration expectations among youth in Icelandic fishing and farming communities
Special Reviewers
Familial and Religious Influences on Adolescent Alcohol Use
Journal Article Familial and Religious Influences on Adolescent Alcohol Use: A Multi-Level Study of Students and School Communities Get access Thoroddur Bjarnason, Thoroddur Bjarnason University at Albany, SUNY and University of Akureyri, Iceland All correspondence should be directed to Thoroddur Bjarnason, Faculty of Social Science and Law, University of Akureyri, IS-600 Akureyri, ICELAND. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this …
Nonmarital Fertility and the Effects of Divorce Rates on Youth Suicide Rates
Using pooled, time-series data for a sample of 15 developed nations, we assess the effect of divorce rates on gender-specific suicide rates for youths aged 15 - 19 with models of relative cohort size, lagged nonmarital fertility, and an interaction term for divorce rates and nonmarital fertility. The results reveal that, for young men, relative cohort size is positively related to suicide rates, and divorce rates interact with lagged nonmarital f…
Religion
The authors investigate the relationship between religion and delinquent behaviour, under conditions of strain. They analyse data from a representative sample of Icelandic adolescents. Building on both the literature from religion and deviance as well as social stress literature they test a model of main and buffer effects of perceived divine support under conditions of strain in adolescents' lives. The model receives considerable support. The st…
Individual and Community Processes of Social Closure
While the concept of social capital has rekindled interest in fundamental issues of social inquiry, concerns have been raised regarding its definition and application in increasingly diverse topics. We address these concerns by revisiting Coleman's and Bourdieu's original ideas of the role of family and school in adolescent outcomes. Multi-level modelling reveals that controlling for individual background, parental relations and adolescent activi…
Egalitarian Attitudes Towards the Division of Household Labor Among Adolescents in Iceland
Anomie Among European Adolescents
Anomie is a complex, dynamic concept that refers simultaneously to a social state and an individual state of mind. Generations of sociologists have attempted to clarify, extend, and measure the concept at various levels of analysis. This article summarizes these developments around the twin concepts of exteriority and constraint. Exteriority refers to experiencing the social world as an objective, predictable reality, while constraint refers to t…
London Calling
Preferred emigration destinations among adolescents reflect images and stereotypes of other countries that continuously emerge in a multitude of local and global discourses and from concrete experiences with other countries. The affinities of Icelandic adolescents are split among the islands of the Northern Atlantic, continental Nordic countries, European core countries and North American countries. If they had to leave Iceland, however, the larg…
Screen-based activities and physical complaints among adolescents from the Nordic countries
The observed associations indicate that time spent on screen-based activity is a contributing factor to physical complaints among young people, and that effects accumulate across different types of screen-based activities
Towards a digital adolescent society? The social structure of the Icelandic adolescent blogosphere
The adolescent production of blogs has created an adolescent public sphere that transcends both intimate circles of friends and the adolescent communities of specific schools or neighborhoods. Almost all 15—16 year old adolescents in Iceland regularly read blogs and many read blogs on a daily basis. Blogs by best friends and adolescents in the concrete adolescent community are most popular but a third of the population follows blogs that originat…
Migration Intentions of Rural Youth in Iceland
Rural communities in Iceland have been profoundly affected by natural resource management policies. As part of a regional development strategy, a large aluminum smelter and 650-megawatt hydroelectric plant were built in the sparsely populated Eastfjords region. This project was aimed at revitalizing the region and creating employment, enabling youth to stay in their home communities. Using surveys from 1992 through 2007, changes in migration expe…
Early Risk Behaviors and Adolescent Injury in 25 European and North American Countries
Injury is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity among adolescents in developed countries. Jessor and Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory suggests an association between risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, drunkenness, cannabis use, and sexual intercourse) and adolescent injury. The present study examined whether early engagement in risk behaviors would predict injury at age 15. It also examined whether such associations were consistent in strength a…
The Cultural Context of Adolescent Drinking and Violence in 30 European Countries
Cross‐national variation in the effect of alcohol on adolescent violence is examined with survey data from 30 European countries. The data are analyzed using a method that makes it possible to isolate the nonspurious portion of the alcohol–violence relationship in different countries. In addition, multilevel models are used to estimate the effects of region and contextual measures of adolescent drinking on the alcohol–violence relationship. The e…
Sociology (32 works) · Psychology (30 works) · Demography (21 works) · Political science (21 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Geography (19 works) · Economics (18 works) · Demography (17 works) · Population (15 works) · Social Psychology (13 works)