Reciprocity in change

Long-term sickness and financial and other informal social support. The project examines how personal social relationships and exchange of private financial and other social support change when people are affected by long-term sick leave.

Illustration of people communicating via network

The research project Reciprocity in change. Long-term sickness and financial and other informal social support has been funded by the Swedish Research Council and conducted in collaboration with researchers at the Department of Social Work at University of Gothenburg.

The overall purpose of the study was to investigate how informal support systems, ie. personal social relationships and the exchange of private financial and other social support, change when people suffer from long-term sick leave.

The intention was to gain knowledge about the scope and nature of the support exchange, but also about guiding principles, norms, and conditions for support exchange such as reciprocity, autonomy, dependence, and power.

Theoretically, the ambition was to increase the understanding of how responsibilities, obligations, and commitments are shaped and changed in connection with changed living conditions. The study includes a questionnaire study with a random sample of 314 people on long-term sick leave and qualitative interviews with about twenty people on long-term sick leave. The project lasted from 2005 to 2009.

The results are presented in the following articles:

Espvall, M (2008) From obligations to negotiations: Reciprocity and reflexivity in informal financial support. European Journal of Social Work 11(4), 355 – 367.

Espvall, M. & Dellgran, P. (2009) Can We Count On Each Other? Reciprocity and conflicts in financial support in Sweden. International Journal of Social Welfare 19,(1), 84 – 94.

Espvall, M. (2012) De sociala relationernas centrifugala och centripetala krafter.Om förändrade relationsmönster i samband med långtidssjukskrivning. Socionomens Forskningssupplement, nr 1, 24 – 33.

Espvall, M. & Dellgran, P. (2015) For the better or for the worse? Transformation of social network relations due to long-term illness. European Journal of Social Work, 1-19.