It appears that there is disciplinary variation in approaches to learning. Furthermore, the results indicate that both approaches to learning and the discipline have an effect on students' experiences of the teaching-learning environment.

The social support and self-esteem of 115 adolescents with visual impairments (who were blind or had low vision) who attended mainstream Finnish schools and a control group of 607 sighted classmates of 66 visually impaired adolescents were assessed using a self-report questionnaire. The study found that the self-esteem of the sighted and visually impaired adolescents did not differ and that relationships with friends significantly contributed to the enhancement of the self-esteem of the adolescents with visual impairments.

The study examines the use of the modified Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (ETLQ) in the Finnish context by focusing on its factor structures and comparing them with those in British data. A total of 2509 Finnish and 2710 British students completed the questionnaire. The comparison of the factor structures were conducted using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) and a transformation analysis. The results showed that although the differences between the factor structures prevented a combined analysis, the structures were highly similar in the two contexts. The study suggests that ETLQ appears to be a sufficiently robust and reliable instrument for use across countries and, in addition, at either the degree subject or the single course module level.

The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between prior knowledge, academic selfbeliefs, and previous study success in predicting the achievement of 139 students on a university mathematics course. Structural equation modelling was used to explore the interplay of these variables in predicting student achievement. The results revealed that domain-specific prior knowledge was the strongest predictor of student achievement over and above other variables included in the model and, together with previous study success, explained 55% of the variance. Academic self-beliefs strongly correlated with previous study success and had a strong direct influence on prior knowledge test performance. However, selfbeliefs predicted student achievement only indirectly via prior knowledge. The results imply that both prior knowledge and self-beliefs should be taken into account when considering instructional support issues, because they can provide valuable insights about the future performance of the students.

Personality features are associated with individual differences in daily emotional life, such as negative and positive affectivity, affect variability and affect reactivity. The existing literature is somewhat mixed and inconclusive about the nature of these associations. The aim of this study was to shed light on what personality features represent in daily life by investigating the effect of the Five Factor traits on different daily emotional processes using an ecologically valid method. The Experience Sampling Method was used to collect repeated reports of daily affect and experiences from 104 healthy university students during one week of their normal lives. Personality traits of the Five Factor model were assessed using NEO Five Factor Inventory. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze the effect of the personality traits on daily emotional processes. Neuroticism predicted higher negative and lower positive affect, higher affect variability, more negative subjective evaluations of daily incidents, and higher reactivity to stressors. Conscientiousness, by contrast, predicted lower average level, variability, and reactivity of negative affect. Agreeableness was associated with higher positive and lower negative affect, lower variability of sadness, and more positive subjective evaluations of daily incidents. Extraversion predicted higher positive affect and more positive subjective evaluations of daily activities. Openness had no effect on average level of affect, but predicted higher reactivity to daily stressors. The results show that the personality features independently predict different aspects of daily emotional processes. Neuroticism was associated with all of the processes. Identifying these processes can help us to better understand individual differences in daily emotional life.

The results highlight the need of greater consideration of psychosomatic symptoms, particularly in adolescence, in later socioeconomic outcomes.

Adverse life events and/or poor perceived social support influence the medium-term outcome of all psychiatric patients with MDD. These factors appear to have the strongest predictive value in the subgroup of patients currently in full remission.

The risk of recidivism was high in this study group yet was similar to that of other violent female offenders. The risk was high very early after release. It seems that women and men who are violent and have personality disorders are comparable in their risk of recidivism.