This study was carried out with 30- to 55-year-old parents of children ages 6 to 13 years in five different countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, and Japan. It aimed at analyzing similarities and differences between words in five languages used to describe different types of bullying and social exclusion and identifying which terms are more appropriate to use in comparisons across cultures and languages. Target terms were selected using focus groups of children. Participants were presented with 25 stick figure cartoons showing different types and contexts of bullying and related behaviors. They were asked to evaluate whether the cartoons could be described or not by one of the target terms. Cluster analysis identified six clusters of cartoons characterized by specific behaviors: nonaggression, fighting, severe physical aggression, verbal aggression, exclusion, and severe exclusion. On the basis of these clusters, there were clear differences across terms and countries regarding both the width of the semantic area of a term and its closeness to the usual scientific definition of bullying.
Recently, independent lines of research have indirectly supported the notion that social variables, especially parent-child relationships, have a significant impact on adults' memories of their early life. In order to directly assess this Italian students were asked to recall as many memories involving parents as they could from before the age of 6 in a 3-minute timed recall task (i.e., memory fluency). They also filled out assessments about parental involvement in their lives as well as the quality of their relationships with their mothers and fathers. We found that, for males, the more involved the parents and the warmer the relationships between sons and both their mothers and their fathers, the more early memories, the more positive early memories, and the more episodic memories men recalled. For women, the warmer the relationship with their mothers, the earlier their earliest memory. Results are discussed in terms of gendered parent-child interactions as well as McAdam's emergent life-story theory.
Friendship and romantic relationships are central to individual social life. These close relationships become increasingly significant during adolescence and early adulthood, promoting human development and well-being [1]. Despite their importance, there are no equivalent measures for the study of the quality of these different types of close relationships.The main aim of the present study was to develop an equivalent self-report measure to assess the quality of friendships and romantic relationships from adolescence to early adulthood. In Study 1 we took the Friendship Qualities Scale (FQS) developed by Bukowski, Hoza and Boivin [2] and adapted it for Italian adolescents and early-adults. The FQS reveals, via confirmatory factor analysis, five main qualitative dimensions: Conflict, Companionship, Help, Security and Closeness. In Study 2 we developed an equivalent version of the FQS, the Romance Qualities Scale (RQS) in order to measure the same five dimensions for romantic relationships.Data analyses verified the multidimensional factorial structure, the factorial invariance, and the reliability of both scales. Our studies therefore verify that the FQS and RQS are reliable measures to assess friendship and romantic relationship quality from adolescence to early adulthood.
Results suggest that physicians can benefit from knowing the phases that infertile couples experience during pregnancy because these can serve as a framework to use in monitoring their transition to parenthood and in planning psychological support and health interventions for them.
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