Open Access

Approximately 300,000 asylum-seeking children arrived in Europe in 2015. The chance of experiencing a traumatic event is very high for fleeing children. Since the origin of the refugees is widespread, the languages spoken are diverse. Multilingual electronic patient-reported outcome systems (ePROs) can be used to gather medical data in a foreign language and display the results in the health professionals' language, which helps overcoming the language barrier. Utilizing such a system, a two-phase study aiming to screen refugee minors for potential mental health issues has started. Potential eligible participants are examined using questionnaires with good psychometric properties and cross-cultural applicability. To date, 75 minors and 21 of their relatives participated in the study, being German and Arabic the most desired languages for the electronic survey. Developing a system that provides multilingual questionnaires entails several drawbacks like a cumbersome translation process and dealing with writing directions. The proposed translation process and the ePRO can be re-used in similar studies.

Die Gesetzesänderung zur Regelung von Ansprüchen ausländischer Personen im SGB ver- schärft die (Über)lebensbedingungen von zugewanderten erwerbslosen drogengebrauchenden Unionsbürger_innen aus Osteuropa; auf ihnen liegt der Fokus dieses Artikels. Bis Dezember 2016 bestehende Spielräume in der Beantragung von Sozialleistungen, sind reduziert worden auf Überbrückungsleistungen und Rückreisehilfen. Betroffene ziehen es jedoch aus unter- schiedlichsten Gründen vor, in bitterer Armut in Deutschland zu bleiben. Mitarbeitende von niedrigschwelligen Hilfseinrichtungen stehen vor unlösbaren Aufgaben.

Communicating with spoken dialogue systems (SDS) such as Apple’s Siri® and Google’s Now is becoming more and more common. We report a study that manipulates an SDS’s word use with regard to politeness. In an experiment, 58 young adults evaluated the spoken messages of our self-developed SDS as it replied to typical questions posed by university freshmen. The answers were either formulated politely or rudely. Dependent measures were both holistic measures of how students perceived the SDS as well as detailed evaluations of each single answer. Results show that participants not only evaluated the content of rude answers as being less appropriate and less pleasant than the polite answers, but also evaluated the rude system as less accurate. Lack of politeness also impacted aspects of the perceived trustworthiness of the SDS. We conclude that users of SDS expect such systems to be polite, and we then discuss some practical implications for designing SDS.

Persistent feelings of gender dysphoria (GD) are accompanied by distress and body dissatisfaction in most clinically referred adolescents and adults. Transition-related medical interventions (e.g., puberty suppression, hormones, or surgery) may alleviate body dissatisfaction. The aim of the present cross-sectional study was to compare multidimensional body image across clinically referred adolescents and adults undergoing different transition-related medical interventions. Two clinical samples of adolescents (n = 82) and adults (n = 120) referred to specialized departments of four different transgender health services in Germany participated in the study. In total, 202 individuals from the female-to-male (FtM individuals) and male-to-female (MtF individuals) spectrum aged 14-74 years were included at different stages of their transition. Four scales assessing multidimensional aspects of body image (measured by the Body Image Assessment Questionnaire, FBeK) were compared across three groups: sample, gender, and medical interventions (while controlling for age and treatment duration). The results indicated less favorable body image scores compared with the norm in both adolescents and adults with GD. Individuals who had undergone transition-related medical interventions presented a significantly better body image on two of the four scales. Differences according to gender and age were also present. These findings suggest that medical interventions, especially gender-affirming hormones and surgery, are generally beneficial to the body image in individuals with GD. However, not all of the less favorable outcomes in multidimensional body image were positively influenced by the treatment conditions and may thus benefit from additional integrative counseling before and during transition.