The association between role model presence and self-regulation in early adolescence: A cross-sectional study

A Strategy for Optimization of Self-Care in the Treatment of Children and Young People After Liver Transplantation: A Qualitative Study

BACKGROUND

To optimize self-care in the treatment of children and young people (CYP) after liver transplantation, intervention by healthcare professionals is necessary for both the CYP and their parents. Increasing evidence supports a comprehensive intervention strategy with dedicated individual time, but data on specific ways of involvement are limited. We explored specific and structured intervention strategies within the healthcare system in Japan to optimize self-care in treatment for CYP after liver transplantation by describing the best practices discussed by healthcare providers.

METHODS

We conducted semi-structured interviews with six RN clinical transplant coordinators from six different facilities in Japan. We inquired about their collaborative interventions with other healthcare professionals for CYP after liver transplantation. Each interview was audio-recorded, and anonymized transcripts were qualitatively coded and analyzed.

RESULTS

Our findings revealed interventions to optimize self-care in CYP after liver transplantation, involving three core categories: invest in future young people, grounding autonomy from the start, employ a patient-centered approach to optimizing self-care in CYP after liver transplant, and optimize the environment as an enabling factor for self-care through CYP stage.

CONCLUSIONS

This study emphasizes a holistic approach to optimizing self-care in CYP after liver transplantation by integrating normative development with transplant therapy demands. It focuses on two key age groups: early childhood and adolescence, within a life course perspective.

Investigating the role of clinical exposure on motivational self-regulation skills in medical students based on cognitive apprenticeship model

BACKGROUND

The importance of motivation regulation in medical students is highly significant due to their unique educational circumstances, such as clinical exposure. However, the role of clinical exposure in learning motivational self-regulation skills in students has not been explored thus far. This current study aims to investigate the role of clinical exposure on motivational self-regulation skills in medical students based on cognitive apprenticeship model.

METHOD

This study was descriptive-analytical research conducted in 2022 on medical students. Data collection involved two questionnaires including Meta motivational Strategies in Medical Students Questionnaire and Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire. The research comprised two stages including measuring motivational self-regulation strategies in students before entering the clinical exposure phase, and simultaneous measurement of clinical exposure based on the student's viewpoint and their motivational self-regulation strategies at the end of the first term of clinical exposure.

RESULTS

The results revealed a significant relationship between six dimensions of the cognitive apprenticeship model, including modeling, coaching, scaffolding, reflection, exploration, and learning environment, with motivational self-regulation strategies. However, there was no significant relationship between the articulation dimension of the cognitive apprenticeship model and motivational self-regulation strategies.

CONCLUSION

Clinical exposure indirectly enhances students' metacognitive skills. Observing the behavior of clinical faculty in the clinical exposure setting leads to the improvement of motivational self-regulation strategies in medical students.

Elite athletes’ lifestyles: Consumerism to professionalism

Today, elite athletes form an important social group, and the non-sport facets of their lives matter as much as their sports performances. However, there has been little empirical research on the lifestyles of elite athletes. Therefore, this study aimed to develop knowledge about the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyle. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach in two phases. Glaserian grounded theory was used in the first phase, and thematic analysis was used in the second phase. Participants of the first phase included 19 sports experts, such as sports sociologists, sports psychologists, and sports coaches, who were selected by purposive and snowball sampling methods for holding unstructured in-depth interviews. The data were simultaneously analyzed using a set of open, theoretical, selective coding and memos. The codes were grouped into three different categories with different natures. The emerged theory advanced our understanding of the lifestyle shaping structures of elite athletes, lifestyle indicators, and even professionalization of their lifestyles. According to the results, the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyles include indicators, such as professional mindset, competencies, life vision, financial literacy, responsibility, consumption, leisure, personal issues, and religious behavior. Subjects of the second phase were 44 Iranian athletes in the national levels who participated voluntarily in the study. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis method, and lifestyles typologies were identified. Based on results, five dominant lifestyles among the Iranian elite athletes were identified: consumerist, easy going, socially useful, profit-oriented, and professional. Finally, the features of each lifestyle were discussed.

Adaptation of an adult web application for type 1 diabetes self-management to youth: use of the Behaviour Change Wheel to tailor the needs of healthcare transition- A qualitative study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND

Youth (aged 14-24 years) living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) encounter increased challenges in their diabetes self-management (DSM), especially during the transition to adult care. Although DSM education and support are imperative, there is insufficient information on how web-based digital tools tailored to their demands can be developed.

OBJECTIVE

On the basis of the Behavior Change Wheel, this study aims to identify, among youth living with T1D, the needs and factors influencing their DSM in the context of health care transition and to inform the adaptation (content and features) of an adult self-guided web application (Support).

METHODS

Internet-based semistructured individual interviews based on a phenomenological study design were conducted with 21 youths, and transcripts were analyzed using an inductive approach with concept mapping.

RESULTS

Factors influencing T1D self-management were categorized into barriers and facilitators and then as external or internal. Features influencing the accessibility to information, increasing the sense of support, and use of the tool were positively accepted. Features unrelated to their expectations of digital tool use or difficulty navigating were viewed negatively. Participants expressed an interest in reliable, practical, and novel educational content. Although youth considered the information provided by medical professionals to be important, peer exchange was deemed necessary to obtain a practical perspective and real-life examples.

CONCLUSIONS

Compared with the adult population, in addition to tailored content and a simplified information search process, when building a DSM education and support digital tool for youth, features should be selected to encourage supervised peer exchange.

Personalized values in life as point of interaction with the world: Developmental/neurobehavioral basis and implications for psychiatry

Behavioral neuroscience has dealt with short-term decision making but has not defined either daily or longer-term life actions. The individual brain interacts with the society/world, but where that point of action is and how it interacts has never been an explicit scientific question. Here, we redefine value as an intrapersonal driver of medium- and long-term life actions. Value has the following three aspects. The first is value as a driving force of action, a factor that commits people to take default-mode or intrinsic actions daily and longer term. It consists of value memories based on past experiences, and a sense of values, the source of choosing actions under uncertain circumstances. It is also a multilayered structure of unconscious/automatic and conscious/self-controlled. The second is personalized value, which focuses not only on the value of human beings in general, but on the aspect that is individualized and personalized, which is the foundation of diversity in society. Third, the value is developed through the life course. It is necessary to clarify how values are personalized through the internalization of parent-child, peer, and social experiences through adolescence, a life stage almost neglected in neuroscience. This viewpoint describes the brain and the behavioral basis of adolescence in which the value and its personalization occur, and the importance of this personalized value as a point of interaction between the individual brain and the world. Then the significance of personalized values in psychiatry is discussed, and the concept of values-informed psychiatry is proposed.

Raising Adolescent Children as a Developmental Task of Iranian Middle-aged Mothers: A Qualitative Study

Background

Most parents consider adolescence to be the most difficult stage of parenting. Parental practice is a determining factor in adolescents' outcomes. Mothers play the main role of parenting in Iran. Coinciding the transition of adolescence with the transition of middle-aged mothers can affect the mothers' parenting practice. The present study aimed at explaining the Iranian mothers' practice in parenting an adolescent child.

Methods

This qualitative conventional content analysis was conducted from July 2018 to November 2019 in Kashan. 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews with mothers of adolescent children were performed using a purposive sampling method. The data were analyzed through conventional content analysis. Data collection and analysis were performed simultaneously using MAXQDAv10 software.

Results

Regarding the study objectives, two themes and six main categories were identified. The theme of 'laying the groundwork for upbringing' was detected by two main categories: 'meeting the needs and 'effective interaction with the adolescent'; also, the theme of 'individual-social capacity building' was explained by four main categories: 'helping to gain independence', 'modeling individual-social behavior', 'socializing the adolescent', and 'preparing to accept future roles'.

Conclusion

Mothers' practice was mainly focused on adolescents' independence, college education, career prospects, and marriage preparation and respect for older adults. Consistent with this transition to modernity, and contrary to the collectivist values of Iranian society, mothers' practice was in line with developing adolescents' independence and building their self-confidence, which is close to the authoritative parenting style.

Subjective well-being and academic performance among middle schoolers: A two-wave longitudinal study

INTRODUCTION

Previous studies have suggested that present subjective well-being promotes students' academic achievement. However, adolescents' subjective well-being tends to be future-oriented; for example, when adolescents think about the future, they have hopeful expectations, feel energized, or confused. Therefore, this 14-month follow-up study conducted in China aimed to establish the longitudinal relationships between present- and future-oriented well-being and academic achievement.

METHODS

Using two waves of data, this longitudinal study explored the bidirectional relationships between present- and future-oriented well-being and academic achievement among 189 Chinese middle school students (102 girls, 82 boys, 5 unknown) whose mean age was 13.76 at Time 1 and 14.78 at Time 2. The Adolescent Well-being Scale, which has six dimensions (present life satisfaction, present positive affect, present negative affect, hopeful future expectations, positive affect toward future life, and negative affect toward future life) was administered to all students at Time1 and Time 2, and academic scores were collected two weeks later. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

Cross-lagged analyses revealed that present life satisfaction, present positive affect, and positive affect toward future life at Time 1 were positively correlated with academic achievement at Time 2.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that both present- and future-oriented well-being are associated with later academic achievement. Teachers and parents should cultivate students' well-being by targeting not only present life satisfaction and positive affect but also positive feelings toward the future.

Degree of influence in class modifies the association between social network diversity and well-being: Results from a large population-based study in Japan

BACKGROUND

Social network diversity can be associated with physical and mental health among adolescents, which might be modified by their perceived degree of influence in class. We aimed to examine the association between social network diversity and physical and mental health, and to elucidate its effect modification by perceived degree of influence in class.

METHODS

Data were obtained from the Kochi Child Health Impact of Living Difficulty (K-CHILD) study in 2016, which targeted 5th, 8th and 11th grade children living in Kochi Prefecture in Japan (N = 9998). Social network diversity accounted for the number of social roles in which adolescents had regular contact. Degree of influence in class, depression (using Depression Self-Rating Scale for children (DSRS)) and self-rated health were assessed by children, and behavior problem and prosocial behavior (using Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)) was assessed by caregivers.

RESULTS

Significant association of social network diversity with depression (Coefficient (B) = -0.59, 95% confidence interval (CI) = -0.68 to -0.50), self-rated health (B = 0.09, 95% CI = 0.07 to 0.11), behavior problem (B = -0.71, 95% CI = -0.82 to -0.61) and prosocial behavior (B = 0.06, 95% CI = 0.02 to 0.11) were found. The association with depression and self-rated health was stronger among children with perceived low degree of influence (both p for interaction < 0.001). A similar trend was observed for behavior problem (p for interaction = 0.053), but effect modification was not found for the association between social network diversity and prosocial behavior.

CONCLUSIONS

Social network diversity was beneficial for adolescent physical and mental health, especially for children with perceived lower degree of influence in class.

Mindfulness and Self-Regulation Strategies Predict Performance of Romanian Handball Players

Previous studies on handball players’ performance are focused more on influence of physical, physiological factors and tactical strategies and less on the influence of cognitive, metacognitive and attentional regulation strategies. Performance can be achieved by attentional and emotional regulation alongside cognitive, metacognitive and procedural regulation strategies. This study explores the association between self-regulation strategies, mindfulness practice and performance. The sample consists of 288 Romanian handball players. The participants were 30% male and 70% female, with age between 12.01 and 14 years old, divided in three categories. The quantitative research design is descriptive and transversal. The method was survey based on questionnaires. There were interesting results found in different age categories and different performance levels. The variables (state mindfulness of body, self-monitoring, and self-efficacy) explained 87% of the variance in sports performance, in a hierarchical multiple regression. The research findings indicated that handball players with a high level of acceptance of one’s own thoughts and emotions, non-judging present-moment awareness, conscious monitoring the execution of movements, and confidence in their abilities to succeed could have more chances to achieve the desired performance.