Religious education programme of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong: Challenges and responses since 1997

The Catholic Church, the largest school-sponsoring body in Hong Kong, is a major provider of religious schools and educational programmes. In 2006, the Catholic Diocese released its first centralised and comprehensive curricular document concerning religious and moral education (RME) in Catholic schools. Taking this programme as a reflection of the Church’s response to the challenges of a changing social milieu, severed church–state relations and shortcomings in Catholic education in post-1997 Hong Kong, this article reviews the framework and principles of the new curriculum. While retaining strong religious elements in its curriculum, the Catholic Church has widened and re-oriented its programme, and re-designed the contents and pedagogical methods. The new programme is characterised by adjustment and differentiation, upholding Christian faith, and selective absorption of Chinese culture. This article also discusses problems in the implementation of the new programme, including organisational compartmentalisation and an underdeveloped political dimension in the content.     

The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries

The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross‐cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.     

Mental health of Chinese primary care patients with lower urinary tract symptoms

The aim of this study was to evaluate the mental health of Chinese primary care patients with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). This was a cross-sectional observational study. Five hundred and nineteen subjects with LUTS completed a structured questionnaire containing the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-Short Form, the International Prostate Symptom Score, the adapted International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Urinary Incontinence Short Form and questions about socio-demographics. Overall, 17.7% of subjects reported depressive symptoms, 24.3% anxiety symptoms and 9.6% stress symptoms. In males, demographic factors associated with poorer mental health included being not married; clinical factors included higher LUTS severity, weak stream, straining and mixed urinary incontinence. In females, demographic factors associated with poorer mental health included being younger, not married and lower household income; clinical factors included higher LUTS severity, incomplete bladder emptying, urgency and weak stream. Chinese primary care patients with LUTS appear to be an at-risk group for poorer mental health with increased prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms and may require routine screening to identify those who may require more tailored interventions to address both their urinary symptoms and psychological distress.     

Relationships Among Social Policy Factors,National Competitiveness,and Happiness

The aim of this study is to construct a causal relationship model explaining the relationships between social policy factors and national competitiveness and national happiness; and to analyse how the former affect the latter as final dependent variables. In doing this, the study employs data for OECD member countries. Research regarding the determinants affecting national competitiveness and people’s happiness has tended to focus mainly on personal or collective characteristics such as age, gender, economic infrastructure, etc. As a result, social policy factors, including welfare budget, unemployment support budget and income inequality, have rarely been addressed in the analysis of determinants affecting national competitiveness or happiness, which is regarded as the final policy aim to be achieved by government. In particular, there has been little academic research utilizing OECD database statistics on social policy indicators. Against this background, this study uses the Structural Equation Modeling approach (SEM) to identify the direct and indirect effects of social policy factors on national competitiveness and happiness, and puts forward policy suggestions for attaining these two great goals of social policy.     

Satsuma - 3rd Place

Journal of Medical Humanities -     

Goal-Focused Leadership,Leader-Member Exchange,and Task Performance: The Moderating Effects of Goal Orientations and Emotional Exhaustion

An important role of leaders is to foster followers’ performance through goal setting processes, which involve reciprocal interactions between leaders and followers (Locke & Latham in American Psychologist, 57, 705–717, 2002). Drawing upon the theory of role-making processes and a resource allocation framework, this study examined (a) how leaders’ goal setting activities interact with employees’ goal orientations and emotional exhaustion in predicting leader-member exchange (LMX), and (b) how LMX intervenes between goal-focused leadership and followers’ task performance. Hypotheses were tested using data collected from a sample of 187 leader-subordinate dyads from South Korea. Follower learning goal orientation (LGO) weakened the positive relationship between goal-focused leadership and LMX and, indirectly, task performance, contributing to the literature on goal orientations by revealing a “backfire effect” of LGO. Additionally, employee emotional exhaustion also reduced the positive relationship of goal-focused leadership to LMX and, ultimately, task performance. Integrating the theory of role-making processes from the LMX literature and a resource allocation perspective on self-regulation behavior, the present findings indicate that LMX is a key process through which goal-focused leadership relates to follower task performance. Furthermore, this study contributes to the goal-focused leadership literature by pointing out the importance of adopting an interactional perspective on leaders’ influence. Specifically, findings suggest that followers with divergent characteristics in terms of goal orientations and resourcefulness respond differently to leaders’ goal setting activities. This is one of the few studies that have examined the mechanisms and boundary conditions by which leaders’ goal-focused behaviors relate to followers’ task performance.     

Immigrant Mothers of Color,Pastoral Theology,and the Law

The idealization of motherhood is based on a white, heterosexual, middle-class, and married woman. This has caused problems for most women, especially for women of color. I examine these problems and how the law should address the expectations that are associated with the status of motherhood. I also introduce the current conversation on caretaking among feminist legal theorists. I focus on Martha Fineman’s arguments on the public nature of caretaking work, which includes public assistance to women who care for children as well as dismantling the institution of marriage. I argue that a feminist pastoral and legal theoretical analysis also needs to engage in a patri-kyriarchal analysis that examines issues of citizenship for immigrant women of color.