Recent surveys have found a strong decrease in alcohol consumption among young people and this trend has been identified in European countries, Australia and North America. Previous research suggests that the decline in alcohol consumption may be explained by changes in parenting style, increased use of social media, changes in gender identities or a health and fitness trend. We use qualitative interviews with drinking and non-drinking young people from Sweden (N = 49) to explore in what way and in what kinds of contexts these explanations may hold true and how they alone or together may explain declining alcohol consumption among young people. By using the pragmatist approach, we pay attention to what kinds of concerns, habits, practices, situations and meanings our interviewees relate to adolescents' low alcohol consumption or decline in drinking. By analyzing these matters, we aim to specify the social mechanisms that have reduced adolescents' drinking. Our paper discovers social mechanisms similar to previous studies but also a few that have previously been overlooked. We propose that the cultural position of drinking may have changed among young people so that drinking has lost its unquestioned symbolic power as a rite of passage into adulthood. There is less peer pressure to drink and more room for competing activities. This opening of a homogeneous drinking culture to the acceptance of differences may function as a social mechanism that increases the success of other social mechanisms to reduce adolescents' drinking. Furthermore, the results of the paper suggest a hypothesis of the early maturation of young people as more individualized, responsible, reflective, and adult-like actors than in earlier generations. Overall, the paper provides hypotheses for future quantitative studies to examine the prevalence and distribution of the identified social mechanisms, as well as recommends directions for developing effective interventions to support young people's healthy lifestyle choices.

In qualitative research interviewing we can use stimulus texts (such as photos, films, adverts, sketches, news, historical sources) as devices for encouraging our interviewees to speak about the research topic. In literature this subject has, however, received very minor analytical interest. This article proposes that there are at least three analytically separate strategies for selecting and using stimulus texts in the production and analysis of interview data. In qualitative research, stimulus objects may be used as clues, as microcosms or as provokers. The different strategies imply different research designs, interview procedures and ways of analyzing the data. When we use stimulus texts as clues, we build the interview session so that the texts, together with the interview questions, induce our interviewees to extrapolate how the texts stand for the whole (metonymy). When we use stimulus texts as microcosms, we pose the interview questions so that our interviewees compare their worlds and identity positions against those of the stimulus objects (mimesis, identification). When stimulus texts are used as provokers, the researcher chooses cultural products that challenge, with the aid of provocative questions, the interviewees to deal with the established meanings, conventions and practices (symbolic dimension, naturalness, normality) of the phenomenon under examination.

A traditional heavy intoxication-oriented drinking style, “heroic drinking,” is a central drinking practice in Denmark and Finland, especially among men. However, it seems that another drinking style leading to intoxication, “playful drinking,” has become more prevalent in Denmark as well as in Finland. Playful drinking is characterized by self-presentations in diverse forms of game situations in which you need to play with different aspects of social and bodily styles. We approach the positions of heroic drinking and playful drinking among young adults (between 17 and 23 years) in Denmark and Finland by analyzing how they discuss these two drinking styles in focus groups (N = 16).

Purpose: Recent studies have introduced new productive theoretical orientations to the vignette studies. There is not, however, sufficient analytical discussion on how the vignettes can be used in qualitative interviews for different functions. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: Whatever theoretical framing the researcher decides to apply in qualitative interviews using vignettes, the paper proposes that it is always important to consider in what way the chosen vignettes refer to the object under examination, whether they represent it as clues (metonyms, symptoms, enigmatic traces), as microcosms (icons, metaphors, totems, ideal types, homologies) or as provokers (anomalies, taboos, controversies). Findings: When vignettes are used as clues in interviews, they can be introduced as puzzling traces, tracks or indexes which together with the interview questions carry out the interviewees to metonymic reasoning. When vignettes are used in interviews as microcosms, the interview questions are built so that they encourage the interviewees to consider the vignettes as icons that mimic reality or realities, their actors, situations, acts, events and processes. And when vignettes are used as provokers, they are selected and produced so that they challenge the forms, boundaries, meanings and habits of the well-known and plausible realities of the interviewees. Originality/value: The paper demonstrates with examples how vignettes function in the interviews as clues, microcosms or provokers and shows why it is important to pay attention to this.