Utilizing Participatory Mapping and GIS to Examine the Activity Spaces of Homeless Youth

Although previous studies have informed our understanding of certain aspects of youth homelessness, few studies have critically examined the spatial and social environments utilized by youth as they navigate life on the streets. This study employed participatory mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine the activity spaces of homeless youth as they relate to sense of community and psychological well‐being. Participants were 28 youth experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon, USA. Results suggest that youth engage most frequently in service‐related activities, and their activity participation is significantly associated with sense of community and psychological well‐being. The utility of innovative participatory methods for better understanding the diverse experiences of homeless youth is discussed alongside examination of their practical implications.     

Social identities promote well‐being because they satisfy global psychological needs

Social identities are known to improve well‐being, but why is this? We argue that this is because they satisfy basic psychological needs, specifically, the need to belong, the need for self‐esteem, the need for control and the need for meaningful existence. A longitudinal study (N = 70) revealed that gain in identity strength was associated with increased need satisfaction over 7 months. A cross‐sectional study (N = 146) revealed that social identity gain and social identity loss predicted increased and reduced need satisfaction, respectively. Finally, an experiment (N = 300) showed that, relative to a control condition, social identity gain increased need satisfaction and social identity loss decreased it. Need satisfaction mediated the relationship between social identities and depression in all studies. Sensitivity analyses suggested that social identities satisfy psychological needs in a global sense, rather than being reducible to one particular need. These findings shed new light on the mechanisms through which social identities enhance well‐being.     

Working together or separately? The role of identity and cultural self‐construal in well‐being among Japanese youth

Young people develop a sense of personal identity during the transition to adulthood, a time when individuals choose and adhere to a specific set of goals, values, and beliefs. In addition, in many contemporary Asian societies, youth are expected to acquire and balance traditional and Western cultural views of the self — that is, independent and interdependent self‐construal. To understand the relationships between the personal and cultural facets of the transition to adulthood, this study examined (a) associations between personal identity and well‐being and (b) the possible moderating role of cultural self‐construal (independence and interdependence) in this link. These hypotheses were tested in a sample of 520 Japanese university students (52.6% female). The results indicated that personal identity predicted each dimension of well‐being, suggesting that the importance of personal identity in promoting youth's well‐being can be understood as a universal phenomenon. Moreover, because the moderating role of self‐construal in the links between identity and well‐being was found to be limited, personal identity can be viewed as operating separately from self‐construal in well‐being to a large extent. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

The Complexity of Quest in Emerging Adults’ Religiosity,Well‐Being,and Identity

The construct of quest as measured by the Quest Scale raises complexities that this study addressed with online surveys measuring religiosity, ego identity, and well‐being of graduates from two Christian colleges. Intrinsic questers (those above the scale midpoint in intrinsic and quest scores but below the extrinsic midpoint) made up over half of those high in intrinsic religiosity and did not differ in Christian orthodoxy, religious identity, religious coping, or well‐being from the pure intrinsics (those high in intrinsic religiosity). Indiscriminately pro‐religious questing individuals (those high in intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity and quest) were less religious and showed poorer coping than intrinsic questers. Quest appears to be a reasonable measure of religious orientation, improving prediction of Christian orthodoxy, religious identity, and religious coping, and was more highly correlated with ego identity exploration than with stress. In association with intrinsic religiosity quest does not appear to indicate weak religiosity or poor well‐being. Instead, intrinsic questers may pursue a distinctive developmental trajectory, a path of existential searching by which emerging adults manage the demands of contemporary culture while maintaining a mature faith.     

Why are people with insecure attachments unhappy? The mediation of meaning in life

This study explores the mediating role of meaning in life with respect to the relationship between adult attachment and psychological well‐being. This study proposed that because people with insecure attachments have difficulty in connecting with the external world, this may decrease their ability to attain meaning in life, which may in turn diminish their well‐being. Two studies (N = 155 and 234, respectively, with age range from 18 to 31) were conducted. Participants completed self‐report measures of attachment, well‐being and meaning in life. The results consistently revealed a full mediation effect of meaning in life on the relationship between attachment and well‐being. The findings suggested that a deeper sense of meaning in life comes from one's connection with the external world, especially with other people.     

Spirituality and the Successful Aging of Older Latinos

Using face‐to‐face interviews and a self‐report questionnaire, the authors investigated the contributions of spirituality and religiosity to the well‐being and levels of depression of 60 Latino adults ages 50 to 84 after controlling for age, health, education, and economic strain. Religiosity and spirituality predicted well‐being; however, increases in well‐being were associated with lower levels of externalizing religiosity and higher levels of spirituality. Economic strain overshadowed all other variables in predicting depression. Thus, 2 factors predicted the psychological health of Latino elders: Economic strain predicted depression, and spiritual health predicted well‐being. Several suggestions for implementing the findings are presented.     

Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality?

This article substantiates the thesis that the outlines of the future and present can be made visible and comprehensible by applying a new methodology for cognition of regularities in the human community development. This methodology made it possible to define that there have been and are only two paradigms of the human system development in the entire multicentury course of the human community development. Cycles, crises, chaos, and all negative phenomena are nothing else but natural products of the second, indirect paradigm of development. The new model of life organization at each local level is at the same time the former, first development paradigm, based on the direct interconnection between production and consumption of specific human beings, but raised onto the new high-tech level. Practical realization of this model is the only feasible precondition for the transition to sustainable and crisis-free development.     

Properties of Being in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Abstract

While it is well known that the early Heidegger distinguishes between different ‘kinds of being’ and identifies various ‘structures’ that compose them, there has been little discussion about what these kinds and structures of being are. This paper defends the ‘Property Thesis’, the position that kinds of being (and their structures) are properties of the entities that have them. I give two arguments for this thesis. The first is grounded in the fact that Heidegger refers to kinds and structures of being as ‘characteristics’ and ‘determinations’, which are just two different words for ‘properties’, in the broadest senses of these terms. The second argument is based on the fact that kinds and structures of being play three roles that properties are supposed to play: they account for similarities between things, they are what predicates express, and they are what abstract nouns refer to.