Sara Rolando

Sara Rolando
Eclectica+

PhD

About

90
Publications
11,962
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Introduction
Research interests alcohol, drugs, gambling, and other potentially addictive behaviours, from a cultural perspective (e.g. drinking cultures, youth cultures, gender studies, users' perspective, life trajectories, media studies) Methods and techniques - qualitative methods - comparative qualitative methods (e.g. with use of picture/video stimulus) - media studies (press items, marketing...) - web-based methods (e.g. forum/marketplace/social network forum analysis, you tube analysis...)

Publications

Publications (90)
Article
Nonostante la guida in stato di ebbrezza sia stata oggetto, a partire dagli anni Novanta, di numerose campagne nazionali e locali e di programmi e interventi di prevenzione e promozione della salute, il problema non può considerarsi risolto. Se possiamo ritenere che vi sia una maggiore informazione rispetto al passato, cos'è che spinge a mettersi a...
Article
Full-text available
Aims: Voluntary self-exclusion (VSE) programmes are intended to minimise gambling-related harm. They are considered effective for the individual but several weaknesses have been reported that deter individuals from enrolment. The present paper summarises opinions about and experiences with VSE strategies and assesses gaps and needs with regard to t...
Article
Purpose This paper aims to investigate the cultural meanings of excessive drinking in three different countries with different levels of alcohol use chosen as case studies of wider geographies representing Northern (Denmark), Southern (Italy) and Eastern (Estonia) Europe. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected according to the Reception A...
Article
Lo studio qualitativo è stato condotto per approfondire, dando voce agli utenti in carico ai servizi dell'ASST Melegnano e della Martesana per disturbo da gioco d'azzardo, le esperienze e le opinioni di due target specifici – donne e giocatori online - che, pur rappresentando una minoranza, sembrano destinati a crescere numericamente. Sia l'azzardo...
Chapter
The work aims to analyse the theme of gambling with a multidisciplinary approach. Specifically, the volume collects the proceedings of the conference, held at the University of Siena in December 2023, entitled ‘Gambling: a multidisciplinary perspective’. The work was conceived with the precise intent of providing a broad spectrum of the issues rela...
Article
Full-text available
In Piedmont (northwestern Italy), as in the rest of the Western world, only a small percentage of the estimated problem gamblers (10–20%) turn to a treatment service to overcome their addiction issues. The study sought to gain a better understanding of the cultural factors that stand in the way of seeking help, thorough qualitative in-depth individ...
Article
Background. The convergence process between gambling and gaming is raising concerns in legislative and policy arenas and blurring definitions in what is and is not considered gambling. Since social definitions influence perception of legitimacy which subsequently shapes behaviours, the present study aims to investigate perceptions and opinions of y...
Article
To date, studies of peer-led online harm reduction communities have focused on web forums, arguing that online spaces are strategic settings for both obtaining up to date information on substances and patterns of drug use and implementing new forms of outreach on the web. The present study analyzes the content and dynamics of a spontaneous users’ g...
Article
Full-text available
While there is evidence for self-exclusion (SE) as an individual-level harm reduction intervention, its effects on reducing harm from gambling at the population level remain unclear. Based on a review of national legal frameworks and SE programs, including their utilization and enforcement in selected high-income societies, the present analysis aim...
Article
Full-text available
Background Electronic gambling machines (EGMs) are amongst the most harmful forms of gambling. The high availability of EGMs is also linked to increased consumption. To reduce the burden of EGMs on public health, policies to reduce their numbers have recently been introduced in Italy and Finland. This study compares the aims and justifications of t...
Chapter
The forms of regulatory interventions in the gambling market differ across countries, but two main types are distinguishable. One is a monopoly regime in which national governments carry the activities directly through companies fully controlled by the State (i.e., Finland, Norway). The other is a licence-based system in which private companies are...
Article
This article explores the participation of young people in contact with criminal justice systems in the development of drugs interventions. Interviews were undertaken with 160 young people (aged 15–25) and 66 practitioners involved in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug interventions. We analyse the key challenges in involving young peop...
Article
Full-text available
The comparative advantages of license-based and monopolistic gambling regimes have been discussed in previous literature from the perspective of their capacity to prevent harms, but less is known about the ability of different regimes to produce public revenue. Gambling is nevertheless an important source of revenue for public service provision. Th...
Chapter
The forms of regulatory interventions in the gambling market differ across countries, but two main types are distinguishable. One is a monopoly regime in which national governments carry the activities directly through companies fully controlled by the State (i.e., Finland, Norway). The other is a licence-based system in which private companies are...
Article
Beccaria F., Rolando S., Petrilli E., Arcieri L. (2022). Tactics of Altered Consumption: Young People’s Drinking Choices in the Italian Movida. Italian Sociological Review, 12 (1): 65-86. Urban nightlife is often depicted as a homogeneous category dominated by the entertainment industry and characterised by at risk drinking practices. Taking on a...
Article
Purpose Spanning almost 30 years, Italy’s experience with take-home-naloxone (THN) provides an interesting case study on the international scene because of its specific history, regulation and trends in overdose (OD) rates. Accordingly, this study aims to contribute to the evidence base for THN and its delivery in a different setting. Design/metho...
Article
Worldwide, there are a few examples of laws seeking to reduce the availability of Electronic Gambling Machines, one being a regional law introduced in Piedmont in 2018 that limited the times and places where gambling is allowed, causing an overall decrease in gambling frequency and expenditure and a heated public debate. This study investigates gam...
Article
The aim of this paper is to assess to what extent prohibitive drug policies hamper the management of drug problems from the perspective of young people who have experience with the criminal justice systems (CJS). Qualitative, in-depth interviews were carried out in six European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the UK) follow...
Article
Full-text available
Based on research undertaken as part of the EU funded EPPIC project, this paper aims to update and elaborate on the relationship between drug use and offending behaviours by exploring variations within a cross-national sample of drug-experienced young people in touch with criminal justice systems. Adopting a trajectory-based approach, interviews we...
Article
Full-text available
The study adopts a qualitative comparative approach to better understand how different dimensions affect social norms regulating alcohol consumption. Female and male attitudes towards drunkenness were analysed on the basis of data from 27 focus groups involving a total of 166 participants from Italy, Finland and Sweden, grouped by age cohort (17–20...
Article
The Italian gambling market has been growing since the 1990s, becoming one of the world’s largest markets. However, since 2004, a number of municipalities have taken measures to limit the negative outcomes of gambling by introducing local regulations, especially ‘timing’ and ‘zoning’ measures aimed at reducing the number of Electronic Gambling Mach...
Article
Purpose Drug-related web forums have been argued to be an effective way to investigate the latest generation of drug users. The purpose of this paper is to explore discussions about drugs and new psychoactive substances (NPS) on an Italian psychonauts’ online community in order to gain a better understanding of the psychonauts’ profiles by scrutini...
Presentation
The percentage of at risk and problem gamblers is stable, but at the individual level patterns of behaviour change (Hodgins, 2001; Winters et al., 2005; Slutske, 2006). Problem gambling is not permanent and it does not concern specific «types» of (vulnerable) people. Non- linear patterns are widespread. Gambling carriers imply the interplay of cult...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between drug use and offending by using the concept of critical moments as an analytical tool. Design/methodology/approach In total, 41 semi-structured individual interviews with young people (15–25 years) using drugs and in touch with the criminal justice system (CJS) were conducted...
Article
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse dynamics amongst members to better understand in what terms and to what extent marketplace forums can be seen as new forms of harm reduction. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative analysis focused on conversations about psychoactive substances on the forum community of AlphaBay Market. A...
Article
The study examines Italian young people’s opinions and attitudes towards alcohol policies in order to shed light on the potential challenges to the introduction of more restrictive policies. A mixed methods research design was employed. A CAWI survey and online forum targeted 15–25 year olds, resulting in 1,816 valid responses to the online questio...
Article
With its geographical differences, Italy provides an interesting case study for analysing the cultural and contextual origin of gambling related problems. By investigating gambling careers, the study sought to scrutinize the interplay between the personal and environmental factors – including social and cultural aspects – that influence changes in...
Article
With its geographical differences, Italy provides an interesting case study for analysing the cultural and contextual origin of gambling-related problems. By investigating gambling careers, the study sought to scrutinize the interplay between the personal and environmental factors – including social and cultural aspects – that influence changes in...
Chapter
With an expenditure of about 96 billion euros in 2016, Italy is one of the world’s biggest gambling markets, where electronic gambling machines are the major source of revenue. Based on an analysis of the legislation and open-ended interviews with key informants and beneficiaries of funding from the gambling industry, the chapter analyses the gambl...
Conference Paper
Hikikomori in Italy is a recent and fast growing phenomenon. Scholars estimate from 60.000 to 100.000 cases (Spiniello et al. 2015) Partial social withdrawal implies restricted social life and school refusal. It received a lot of attention from the media, but few studies are dedicated to it. We carried out a population study, aimed at investigatin...
Article
L'articolo rappresenta un estratto del più ampio rapporto 2016 “Prevenire le morti per overdose da oppiacei – Il modello italiano di distribuzione del naloxone”. Contrariamente a quanto emerge dalla letteratura internazionale (EMCDDA, 2016), a cui sono mancate le necessarie fonti e che colloca le prime esperienze di THN nel 1996, anno in cui il nal...
Article
Full-text available
Aims: The article presents an analysis of sources of information employed in mainstream print media reporting on addiction problems in Finland, Italy and Poland in the 1990s and 2000s. Method: A quantitative content analysis of frequency of different sources employed in articles in daily newspapers from Finland (N = 258), Italy (N = 296), and Po...
Article
Full-text available
Since the 1990s, young people’s drinking has been a matter of public concern, attracting considerable media attention that has contributed to spreading the alarm. The purpose of this article is to dispel some stereotypes about youth drinking in Italy, by putting it in an international perspective and explaining some of the key factors that have con...
Article
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This article examines how people in childhood responded emotionally to family members’ drinking in Finland, Italy, and Sweden. The data consist of retrospective childhood memories told and shared in a focus group context. The results suggest that in the Mediterranean drinking cultures, children develop a neutral and safe emotional contact with drin...
Article
Advertisements not only mirror ideals of masculinity and femininity that prevail in a specific place and time, but also contribute to influencing them. This article analyses alcohol-related advertisements published in women’s magazines from 1967 to 2008 in Italy. The main aim is to understand cultural processes that underlie gender differences in d...
Article
Full-text available
In this article we analyze how Finnish, Italian and Swedish men and women are doing, modifying and unlinking gender in relation to different drinking places and situations. In the study, Finland and Sweden represent the Nordic intoxication-oriented drinking cultures, whereas Italy, in turn, represents the Mediterranean meal drinking cultures. The d...
Article
Introduction: The paper complements an epidemiological analysis of secondary data that compared levels of consumption, alcohol-related mortality and morbidity in territories in Piedmont (N-W Italy), characterized by a different involvement with wine culture, and which showed lower alcohol-related risks in areas of production. Aims: The main aim is...
Article
Full-text available
Since the 1960s, feminist movements have emphasized that men and women should be seen as equal in their roles as parents, breadwinners, and citizens. This conception is not confirmed by the images produced in advertising. This article presents an analysis of alcohol-related advertisements published in Finnish, Italian, and Swedish women’s magazines...
Conference Paper
Il contributo riassume le principali tappe dell’iter legislativo che ha portato all’attuale assetto regolativo del gioco d’azzardo italiano, evidenziando le peculiarità che lo contraddistinguono. Saranno analizzate anche le principali giustificazioni utilizzate dal legislatore in merito alle politiche adottate, le contro-argomentazioni avanzate dag...
Thesis
The aim in this study is to narrow the gap in knowledge about how young people understand their direct (personal) and indirect (others’) drinking experiences by investigating images of alcohol (Sulkunen, 2007) among Italian and Finnish adolescents and young people on the threshold of adulthood. Italy and Finland are considered examples of “geograph...
Article
Female alcohol consumption has long been judged more harshly than male behaviour of the same nature. Scholars have shown that traditional mass media contribute to strengthening these stereotypes. The hypothesis of the present study is that new media, especially Web 2.0 environments, provide room for rewriting gender roles in relation to alcohol. To...
Article
Full-text available
The article reviews portrayals of "the addict" in press items from Italy, Finland, Poland, and The Netherlands. The dataset includes over 1,327 items from four national newspapers published in 1991, 1998, 2011. The portrayals varied according to country, period, and type of addiction problem. Results can be read as four cases where different concep...
Article
Press items (N = 1327) about addiction related problems were collected from politically independent daily newspapers in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland from 1991, 1998, and 2011. A synchronized qualitative coding was performed for discerning the descriptions of the genesis to the problems in terms of described causes to and reasons for...
Article
The use of a standard definition of ‘binge drinking’ can potentially offer the advantage of ‘objectifying’ the concept of excessive drinking. Nevertheless, the term has become somewhat confusing, as it is often used as a synonym of drunkenness, making cross-cultural comparison difficult. The present study investigates the meaning Italian young peop...
Article
Background: Political concern with alcohol as a social problem arose in Italy only at the end of last century, when consumption and the death rate from alcohol-related causes had both been trending down for decades. The main aim of this case study is to investigate - applying Wiener's theoretical framework - the role of different stakeholders in t...
Article
Aims: This study aims to investigate the views of adults towards youth drinking, and what they think about alcohol-related parenting styles, as these attitudes are among the factors most affecting adolescents’ alcohol use and misuse. Methods: Ten focus groups involving 30 parents and 32 teachers were organized in two towns located in Northern (Tori...
Article
Previous research on youth drinking has brought out important features in young people's time- out cultures as and how they relate to the current neo-liberal social order with its expectation of self-governing individuals. However, previous research has not sufficiently considered cultural variations on the meaning of binge drinking for young peopl...
Article
Full-text available
The study applies the concept of boundary work, as developed by Lamont and Molnár to analyze how young people perceive adult drinking. It is based on eight focus groups involving young people aged 17 to 24 years conducted in Torino (IT) and Helsinki (FI). The study contributes to understand why different orientations towards heavy drinking persist...
Conference Paper
Since the 1960s, feminist movements have emphasized that men and women should be seen as equal in their roles as parents, breadwinners, and citizens. This conception is not confirmed by the images produced by advertising. The article presents an analysis of alcohol-related advertisements published in Finnish, Italian and Swedish women’s magazines f...
Article
Full-text available
Aims: The study compares young adults’ cultural understandings of intimate partner violence (IPV) and its connections with alcohol use and gender roles. Data and analyses: Comparative focus group interview data were collected in seven countries (Argentina, Finland, Italy, Nigeria, Uganda, Uruguay, Sri Lanka). Similar lists of codes and coding proce...
Article
Full-text available
Aim This article compares adolescents' images of alcoholism in two different drinking geographies, namely Helsinki (Finland) and Turin (Italy), with the aim to better understand the persisting variance in youth drinking within Europe. Design Altogether 28 focus group interviews were conducted at schools among 15-year-old pupils (N=145). To assure...
Article
Aims: This study aims to plug the gap about how young people understand their direct and indirect experience with alcohol by investigating the prevalent images of alcohol among 15-year-olds. The study also aims to clarify the position of young Italians towards traditional Italian drinking culture. Methods: Twenty-two focus groups were organized in...
Article
The study applies the concept of boundary work, as developed by Lamont and Molnár to analyze how young people perceive adult drinking. It is based on eight focus groups involving young people aged 17 to 24 years conducted in Torino (IT) and Helsinki (FI). The study contributes to understand why different orientations towards heavy drinking persist...
Article
Full-text available
The article accounts for qualitative knowledge on European adolescents’ (n=326) ad literacy, genre scepticism and persuasion knowledge as expressed in group discussions about televised beer commercials. Data was collected from six European countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. A general scepticism regarding the comme...
Article
This article, part of a comparative research project (WP2) funded by FP7 ALICE RAP, is based upon a review of literature and documents and 18 individual interviews with Italian national stakeholders (SHs) conducted in 2012. The goal was to identify the main shifts in opioid "substitution drug" treatment policies and understand the role played by di...
Article
Purpose – The study aims to investigate a possible application of the concepts of individualist and collectivist (I‐C) value traits in inquiries on alcohol drinking norms in different alcohol cultures. Design/methodology/approach – Data from focus group discussions (n=16) with Italian and Finnish adolescents (aged 13‐16) is trialled against some t...
Article
The study aims to investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and quality of life (QoL) on a representative sample of adults aged 25-34 living in France, Italy, and the Netherlands (4,841 subjects). The data was collected in 2008 using telephone interviews and analyzed with cluster analysis using Ward's method. Results show that the im...
Article
Aims: The aim of this qualitative research is to show how the alcohol socialization process - i.e. the ways children and young people get acquainted with alcohol - can generate very diverse experiences and meanings in different cultural contexts. Method: A total of 16 focus groups were conducted in Italy and Finland, divided by age (4 groups), gen...
Article
In the period 2007-2009 the Ministry of Health and the CCM (the Desease Control Center), in accordance with the Piemonte Region and the ASL CN2 Alba-Bra, have realized 88 training courses in 11 regions involving 2427 "multipliers of prevention", including Health Service workers, law enforcement officers, driving school teachers, Motor Registry and...
Article
Full-text available
The study is a qualitative investigation into European teenagers’ meaning-making of beer commercials with individualistic and collectivistic drinking messages. The subjects were teenagers (aged 13–16) from Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Eight (8) focus group interviews were conducted in each country, with a total of 267 partic...

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