Ekwall's method in social medicine

The application of Ekwall's method is of considerable importance not only in medicine but also in social sciences and in all sciences concerned with man where qualitative information is used. The authors developed their own variant of Ekwall's method and used it for the evaluation of results of a survey concerned with children at risk. After an explanation of the essence of the method and principles of its application, the authors explain the variant for possible use in social medicine. An important contribution of this procedure is above all the possibility to evaluate the individual comprehensively according to defined signs and to assess accurately the distribution and also the order of comprehensively evaluated individuals of the investigated group.