Do Occupational Performance and Social Support Predict Health and Well-Being Among Mothers of Preterm Infants?

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Giving birth to a preterm infant has significant implications on the mother’s life. The purpose of this study was to compare occupational performance...     

American and Chinese Students’ Calibration of Comprehension and Performance

In the present study we examined the ability of American and Chinese undergraduate students to calibrate their understanding of textbook passages translated into their native languages. Students read a series of texts and made predictions of their understanding of each text as well as the number of questions they would be able to answer correctly. Students also made postdictions of their test performance. Chinese students were significantly better than American students in calibrating their understanding of passages and predicting how many comprehension items they would answer correctly. Chinese students also outperformed American students on comprehension tests. All students were able to make more accurate postdictions of comprehension test scores than predictions. Results are related to possible instructional differences between American and Chinese students. Several possible directions for future research are discussed.     

Do Campus Police Ruin College Students’ Fun?

College students drink alcohol to have fun, but this can lead to trouble with campus police. Based on qualitative data obtained via interviews with 73 students, this article draws on the ethnographic perspective to describe and explain their perceptions of whether campus police ruin college students’ fun. Findings are discussed with respect to prior research on the topic, as well as their broader relevance to utilitarianism, police legitimacy, and procedural justice.     

Helping or Hovering? The Effects of Helicopter Parenting on College Students’ Well-Being

Parental involvement is related to many positive child outcomes, but if not developmentally appropriate, it can be associated with higher levels of child anxiety and depression. Few studies have examined the effects of over-controlling parenting, or “helicopter parenting,” in college students. Some studies have found that college students of over-controlling parents report feeling less satisfied with family life and have lower levels of psychological well-being. This study examined self-determination theory as the potential underlying mechanism explaining this relationship. College students (N = 297) completed measures of helicopter parenting, autonomy supportive parenting, depression, anxiety, satisfaction with life, and basic psychological needs satisfaction. Students who reported having over-controlling parents reported significantly higher levels of depression and less satisfaction with life. Furthermore, the negative effects of helicopter parenting on college students’ well-being were largely explained by the perceived violation of students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy and competence.     

How Do Students Learn Theology?

This paper explores the way students learn theology through a small qualitative research project. It is undertaken in conversation with current higher education learning theory. This learning theory suggests that it is important to discover how a student conceptualizes learning and how they perceive the teaching environment. Students interviewed increasingly spoke of the value of this academic or more cognitive side of learning as they learned “deep approaches.” Important in this movement to deep, transformational learning was the presence of a relational teaching environment in which peers and teachers played a crucial role. This present study offers support to the view that the tradition of the learning community remains important for deploying deep approaches to the learning of theology in higher education. The paper argues that these relational principals of teaching and learning remain important in the face of the increased use of technology‐based tools and other pedagogical challenges to theological education today.     

Does the Quality of Academic Life Matter for Students’ Performance,Loyalty and University Recommendation?

The quality of academic life (QAL) is concerned with all the general feelings of satisfaction of a student who experiences university. For universities, academic staff, public managers and policy makers, the fundamental question is how the measures and management of this construct can be improved in order to render a better service to students. Based on a sample of 726 students from all Portuguese State universities, we test a structural model that allows us to evaluate the impact of QAL on students’ academic performance (SAP) along with loyalty and willingness to recommend the university. In the analysis of all groups, the results reveal that QAL has a positive and significant, although not robust, influence on SAP. That positive influence is ratified, however, in the multi-group analysis for the 2nd and 3rd Study Cycles, through obtaining significant and robust empirical evidence. The results also show that QAL is a good predictor of loyalty and university recommendation.     

Do Middle-Class Students Perceive Poor Women and Poor Men Differently?

In this study, we examined attitudes toward poor women, stereotypes about them, attributions for their poverty, and whether these thoughts and feelings differ from those about poor men. In our Midwestern college students sample (n = 206), attitudes toward poor women were significantly more positive than attitudes toward poor men. In addition, stereotypes of poor women were both more positive and more consistent with gender stereotypes than were those of poor men. Participants endorsed internal attributions for the poverty of both women and men more strongly than external or cultural attributions. However, the content of these attributions was different for the two target groups. Poor women were held responsible for nontraditional familial and reproductive patterns, whereas poor men were held responsible for lack of initiative and self-improvement. For poor men, all types of attributions included references to ability or willingness to work. The three types of attributions were more conceptually distinct for poor women.     

Does the Weekly Practice of Recalling and Elaborating Episodes Raise Well-Being in University Students?

Journal of Happiness Studies - Increasing well-being is a prominent worldwide goal that can be achieved primarily through social support and environmental factors. However, in times of social...     

The Affective Temperaments and Well-Being: Swedish and Iranian Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being

The aim was to investigate the role of the affective temperament model (AFTs) in distinguishing variations in well-being among adolescents from Sweden (n = 222) and Iran (n = 120). Participants self-reported positive (PA) and negative affect (NA), life satisfaction (LS) and psychological well-being (PWB). The model categorizes participants in four different temperaments using the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS): self-actualizing (high PA and low NA), high affective (high PA and high NA), low affective (low PA and low NA), and self-destructive (low PA and high NA). Across cultures, self-actualizing adolescents reported higher LS and PWB. The PWB sub-scale of self-acceptance was positively related to LS regardless of temperament profile or cultural background. Nevertheless, Iranian adolescents with self-destructive profiles reported higher LS than high affective Iranians. The AFTs model is suggested to offer something unique by taking into account the interaction of PA and NA.     

Do Construal Levels Affect Athletes’ Imagery and Performance Outcomes? It Depends on the Task!

We investigated the hypothesis that an interaction of construal levels and task types would improve performance outcomes, mediated by imagery abstraction levels. In a pilot study (N = 30; table tennis rallies, jumps, throws) and a main study (N = 32; badminton rallies, soccer penalties), athletes performed tasks after receiving high or low construal frames, with an imagery recall completed in the main study. Table tennis and badminton players won more rallies in low construal conditions; track athletes and soccer penalties had higher success rates in high construal conditions. Frames impacted self-reported imagery, but abstraction levels of imagery did not affect outcomes.     

Students’ Metacomprehension Knowledge: Components that Predict Comprehension Performance

In the present study, we assessed students’ metacomprehension knowledge and examined the components of knowledge most related to comprehension of expository texts. We used the Revised Metacomprehension Scale (RMCS) to investigate the relations between students’ metacomprehension knowledge and comprehension performance. Students who evaluated and regulated their understanding by using explanatory strategies (adjusting to difficult material and identifying and making connections across main points) performed better on a comprehension test than those who relied on the use of external aids. Use of explanatory strategies was positively related to comprehension performance, particularly for students with poorer evaluation and regulation skills. Results suggest that the RMCS is effective at assessing students’ ability to both evaluate and regulate their understanding and can help identify effective strategies for increasing comprehension performance.     

Elementary School Students’ Subjective Well-Being Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study

First empirical results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has a negative impact on adolescents’ and adults’ subjective well-being. In the present study we focus on the subjective well-being of elementary school children before and after the first pandemic-related school lockdown and examine if possible declines in subjective well-being are especially pronounced for some groups, considering socio-economic status, migration background, and gender as moderators. We tested N?=?425 elementary school students (mean age: M?=?8.19; SD?=?1.04) longitudinally with four measurement points (three before the school lockdown and one after) regarding their general life satisfaction, mood, and domain satisfaction regarding peers, family, and school. Piecewise growth curve models revealed a significant decline in positive mood and in satisfaction with the family. Decline in life satisfaction and satisfaction with peers nearly missed significance. The investigated moderators had no impact on the changes in subjective well-being. We conclude that the pandemic had detrimental effects on young children’s subjective well-being.

     

Do Relationship Styles Moderate Influences of Perceived Maternal Support on Early Adolescents’ Well-Being?

This study was designed to examine whether the impact of adolescents?? perceptions of maternal support on their well-being hinges on their self-perceived styles of relating to their mother. Early adolescents (N?=?174, 88 girls, M age 13.04?years) in England were assessed for perceptions of maternal support (emotional support, autonomy support), self-perceived styles of relating to their mother (preoccupied, avoidant), and well-being (self-reported depression, peer social competence, and peer-reported internalizing, externalizing problems). As expected, adolescents with a preoccupied (avoidant) style of relating to their mother were vulnerable to (unaffected by) their perceptions of her. Results attest to the power of relationship styles in affecting how early adolescents process information about their mothers in a manner that has implications for their well-being.     

Do College Students’ Gender-typed Attitudes About Occupations Predict Their Real-World Decisions?

We investigated US college students’ gender-typed attitudes about occupations for themselves as a predictor of their real-world decisions regarding an academic major and intended future career. We also investigated US college students’ attitudes about the appropriateness of gender-typed occupations for other men and women. The sample (N = 264) was mostly Caucasian and was drawn from a large state university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. An established self-report measure (see Liben and Bigler 2002) was used to assess attitudes about occupations for the self and other people. Gender-typed majors and intended careers were categorized using a coding scheme that was developed for the study. College students preferred gender-stereotypical occupations for themselves. Women’s, but not men’s, preferences for gender-typed occupations predicted their decisions about their academic major and the career they intended to pursue. Both men and women reported that men should only hold masculine occupations, but that women should hold both masculine and feminine occupations. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding the gender gap in occupations in the US, such as the underrepresentation of women in STEM careers and barriers for men in stereotypically female occupations.     

Subjective Well-Being and Kahneman’s ‘Objective Happiness’

This paper is an attempt to clarify the relation between, on the one hand, the construct of ‘objective happiness’ recently proposed by Daniel Kahneman and, on the other hand, the principal focus of happiness studies, namely subjective well-being (SWB). I have two aims. The first, a critical one, is to give a theoretical explanation for why ‘objective happiness’ cannot be a general measure of SWB. Kahneman’s methodology precludes incorporation of relevant pieces of information that can become available to the subject only retrospectively. The second aim, a constructive one, is to clarify the exact connection between ‘objective happiness’ and the wider notion of SWB. Unlike Kahneman, who treats the notion as a useful first approximation, I propose that its applicability should be thought of as context-dependent: under some conditions it could be the right measure of SWB but what these conditions are involves both psychological and ethical considerations.     

Do Orientations to Happiness Mediate the Associations Between Personality Traits and Subjective Well-Being?

Personality traits have frequently been observed to be associated with subjective well-being. It has been suggested that personality traits may lead individuals to experience life in certain ways which, in turn, influences their subjective well-being. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unknown. The present study hypothesized that the ways in which individuals endorse strategies for achieving happiness (i.e., orientations to happiness: through a life of pleasure, through a life of engagement, or through a life of meaning) mediates the associations that personality traits have with subjective well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life, positive affect, and negative affect). Our results indicated that an orientation to meaning in life partially mediated the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction. In addition, all three orientations to happiness (i.e., pleasure, engagement, and meaning) partially mediated the relationship between extraversion and positive affect. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding the connection between personality traits and subjective well-being.     

Effects of Guided Notes on Enhancing College Students’ Lecture Note-Taking Quality and Learning Performance

This study investigates the intervention effects of guided notes on college students’ quality of lecture note-taking and learning performance under the provision of outline notes. It adopted a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest–delayed-posttest design. Sixty-five undergraduates from two psychology classes in a university were recruited as participants. One class was assigned to the experimental group and the other to the control group. Students in the experimental group were provided with outline note plus guided note handouts and asked to complete the guided notes in class, whereas students in the control group received outline note handouts only. The results showed that (1) in the delayed posttest, the experimental group performed better than the control group on the quality of note-taking; (2) in the posttest and delayed posttest, the experimental group performed better than the control group on learning performance; (3) the experimental group had a positive attitude towards the guided notes.     

Circles of Happiness: Students’ Perceptions of Bidirectional Crossovers of Subjective Well-Being

The mental well-being of the world’s adolescents has decreased in the last 20–30 years. Such a trend is visible also in Sweden, a country otherwise considered a positive example in terms of child well-being. In Sweden, students in lower secondary school are especially exposed. From a salutogenic orientation, this study qualitatively explored 200 Swedish students’ (grades 5–9) perceptions of the role of happiness in school. Students perceived happiness as both promoting and being promoted by five aspects: learning, school engagement, appreciation of subjects or lesson content, others’ happiness, and prosocial behavior. Hence, five perceived bidirectional crossovers of subjective well-being were found. These were compared to the findings of previous research about the determinants and effects of happiness. The students’ perceptions both add new direction for future research and align in several respects with decades of earlier research.