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Maintaining and promoting teachers’ work ability is essential for increasing productivity and preventing early exit from the teaching profession. This study aimed to identify the predictors of work ability among upper-secondary school teachers and examine the mediating role of burnout. A large and diverse group of Czech upper-secondary school teachers was surveyed to address this goal. The sample comprised 531 upper-secondary school teachers (50.0 ± 9.94 years, 19.9 ± 10.62 in the teaching profession, 57.6% females). Relatively greater empirical support was found for the effects of burnout, sense of coherence, work–life balance, and perceived relationships in the school environment on work ability than for the impact of age, homeroom teacher duties, workload, and caring for elderly relatives. Furthermore, burnout served as an important mediator of the relationship between sense of coherence and work ability. Teachers with a higher sense of coherence are thus better able to cope with adverse work circumstances and identify and mobilize internal and external resources to prevent professional exhaustion and the subsequent decline in work ability. The study can guide interventions on the work ability of teachers.

Life satisfaction, an important precursor of adolescents’ well-being, is linked to daily activities. Substantial changes have been noted in adolescents’ daily activities over the years, raising the question of possible consequences for life satisfaction. This study aimed to explore changes in adolescents’ life satisfaction and their time spent on daily activities (sleeping, engaging in sports, online gaming, school commuting, time spent at school) and further investigate the associations between adolescents’ life satisfaction and these daily activities. The sample comprised 2715 adolescents from birth cohorts surveyed at four time points between 1992 and 2019. Participants were administered the Daily Activities Inventory and the Berne Questionnaire on Adolescents’ Well-Being. Robust ANOVA with post hoc tests and spline regression were employed. We found cohort differences in sleep duration (8.6 h a day on average in 1992 and 7.5 in 2019). Sleep duration of 8 h and 1 h of sports activities had a beneficial effect on life satisfaction, while more than 1 h of online gaming had a negative impact. Neither school attendance nor commuting to school was associated with adolescents’ life satisfaction. The results of this study can inform public-health policies to promote sleeping and sports habits in adolescence.

BackgroundThe importance of studying the excessive use of social media in adolescents is increasing and so is the need for in-depth evaluations of the psychometric properties of the measurement tools. This study investigated the properties of the Social Media Disorder Scale (SMDS) in a large representative sample of Czech adolescents.MethodsWe analyzed the representative sample of 13,377 Czech adolescents (50.9% boys), 11–16 years old, who participated in the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey (2017–18), using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and network models. Furthermore, we evaluated the measurement invariance and constructed the validity of the SMDS.ResultsWe found support for a single dominant factor but not for strict unidimensionality. Several residual correlations were identified. The strongest were for: problems–conflicts–deceptions; persistence–escape; and preoccupation–tolerance–withdrawal. Girls, particularly 13- and 15-year-olds, scored higher than boys in the same age group, and 13- and 15-year-olds achieved higher scores than 11-year-olds, although some items were not invariant between the groups. The SMDS was positively related to other online activities, screen time, and falling asleep late, but negatively related to well-being and mental health.Discussion and conclusionsThe SMDS showed solid psychometric properties and construct validity. However, small violations of measurement invariance were detected. Furthermore, the network analysis showed important residual relationships between the items.

Living in today’s rushed time full of various changes increases the demands on the individual’s ability to adapt to these changes. Career adaptability plays an important role in coping with changing demands in the field of work. What is career adaptability? Why is it important, and what does it affect? The answers to these questions and many others are provided in the monograph, entitled “Career adaptability: Its Forms, Changes, Contexts, and Roles in the Lives of Young Adults Undergoing Upper-Secondary Vocational Education,” which is the first publication written on this topic in the Czech language. In the book, a team of authors presents the construct of career adaptability and the results of unique research carried out in the Czech Republic. In the first part, the reader may find an analytical overview of various concepts of career adaptability and related concepts. The central part of the publication is devoted to the results of quantitatively conducted longitudinal research, which aimed to identify career adaptability and its relationships to several demographic, school, relational, and personality variables in the case of students and later graduates of upper-secondary vocational education—those who are in the crucial stages of their career construction. Many empirical findings concentrated in this book are beneficial not only for the career counseling theories and research on career adaptability but also for vocational education or career counseling practitioners.

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