Life satisfaction is an important indicator of successful development. However, adolescents' life satisfaction tends to be relatively unsteady, and environmental influences play a critical role in shaping life satisfaction among adolescents in the transition to young adulthood. Given the paramount importance that education plays in adolescents' lives, adolescents' life satisfaction may vary as a function of school-related stress experience. At the same time, coping resources may help reduce adverse effects of stress on life satisfaction. With this in mind, we examined whether, and to what extent, perceived stress in education and general self-efficacy (a resource that facilitates coping) affect the life satisfaction of adolescents in transition to young adulthood. We distinguished between baseline levels of stress and self-efficacy and within-person change in stress and self-efficacy to determine whether life satisfaction is sensitive to fluctuations in stress and self-efficacy when person-specific levels of stress and self-efficacy are taken into account. Estimating growth curve models on data from a panel study on the life trajectories of compulsory-school leavers (n = 5,126, 55.3% female), we found that baseline levels of stress and self-efficacy, as well as within-person change in stress and self-efficacy, affected adolescents' life satisfaction.Moreover, our results showed that baseline self-efficacy mitigated the negative effect of baseline stress on life satisfaction. These findings improve our understanding of two major psychological determinants of adolescents' life satisfaction and extend our knowledge of life satisfaction trajectories during the transition to young adulthood.
A main assumption of social production function theory is that status is a major determinant of subjective well-being (SWB). From the perspective of the dissociative hypothesis, however, upward social mobility may be linked to identity problems, distress, and reduced levels of SWB because upwardly mobile people lose their ties to their class of origin. In this paper, we examine whether or not one of these arguments holds. We employ the United Kingdom and Switzerland as case studies because both are linked to distinct notions regarding social inequality and upward mobility. Longitudinal multilevel analyses based on panel data (UK: BHPS, Switzerland: SHP) allow us to reconstruct individual trajectories of life satisfaction (as a cognitive component of SWB) along with events of intragenerational and intergenerational upward mobility-taking into account previous levels of life satisfaction, dynamic class membership, and well-studied determinants of SWB. Our results show some evidence for effects of social class and social mobility on wellbeing in the UK sample, while there are no such effects in the Swiss sample. The UK findings support the idea of dissociative effects in terms of a negative effect of intergenerational upward mobility on SWB.
This study explores how researchers’ analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers’ expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team’s workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers’ results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.
Prior studies have noted several risk and protective factors for school dropout; however, only a few have examined longer-term vulnerabilities alongside temporary risk and protective factors. Consequently, we focused on the role that both stable and time-varying psychosocial risk and protective factors play in dropout intentions and actual dropout, using a 4-year longitudinal design. We investigated to what extent dropout intentions and dropout can be predicted by an interplay between negative life events, general self-efficacy, and perceived social support. We distinguished between time-averaged levels of selfefficacy and social support, and within-person change in self-efficacy and social support over time. This enabled us to establish whether dropout intentions and dropout were sensitive to fluctuations in perceived self-efficacy and social support over time when controlling for person-specific levels of these psychosocial resources. Calculating multilevel models with data from a prospective cohort study (N ϭ 4,956, 43% male), we found that negative life events were significantly associated with an increase in dropout intentions and the likelihood of school dropout. Furthermore, time-averaged levels of self-efficacy and social support, and a within-person (situational) increase in these characteristics relative to their time-averaged levels, were related to lower levels of dropout intentions but did not prevent dropout. The positive relationship between negative life events and dropout intentions was attenuated for individuals who perceived higher levels of self-efficacy than usual. Our findings suggest future research should further investigate time-averaged and situational psychosocial drivers of school dropout in combination. Educational Impact and Implications Statement This study indicates that the experience of negative life events is related to an increase in dropout intentions and the probability of actually dropping out of school or vocational training. Higher levels of both time-averaged and situational self-efficacy and social support are associated with lower levels of dropout intentions, and vice versa. Moreover, when young people feel more efficacious than usual, they are significantly less likely to think about quitting their school or vocational training even in the presence of negative life events. These findings suggest that dropout prevention programs might be more effective if they consider both time-invariant and time-varying social and psychological risk and protective factors.
ObjectivesMedical practice may attract and possibly enhance distinct personality profiles. We set out to describe the personality profiles of surgical and medical specialties focusing on board-certified physicians.DesignProspective, observational.SettingOnline survey containing the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), an internationally validated measure of the Five Factor Model of personality dimensions, distributed to board-certified physicians, residents and medical students in several European countries and Canada. Differences in personality profiles were analysed using multivariate analysis of variance and Canonical Linear Discriminant Analysis on age-standardised and sex-standardised z-scores of the personality traits. Single personality traits were analysed using robust t-tests.ParticipantsThe TIPI was completed by 2345 board-certified physicians, 1453 residents and 1350 medical students, who also provided demographic information.ResultsNormal population and board-certified physicians’ personality profiles differed (p<0.001). The latter scored higher on conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness, but lower on neuroticism (all p<0.001). There was no difference in openness to experience. Board-certified surgical and medical doctors’ personality profiles were also different (p<0.001). Surgeons scored higher on extraversion (p=0.003) and openness to experience (p=0.002), but lower on neuroticism (p<0.001). There was no difference in agreeableness and conscientiousness. These differences in personality profiles were reproduced at other levels of training, that is, in students and training physicians engaging in surgical versus medical practice.ConclusionThese results indicate the existence of a distinct and consistent average ‘physician personality’. Despite high variability within disciplines, there are moderate but solid and reproducible differences between surgical and medical specialties.
A key factor contributing to the non-realization of energy efficiency potentials is the routinized way in which many energy consumption behaviors (ECBs) are performed. To analyze routinized ECBs, we draw on social practice theory and psychological concepts and suggest a framework that considers individual, social, and material factors. Based on our proposed framework and employing multivariate regression analysis, we gain new insights into associated factors of routinized ECBs-particularly for washing and drying clothes and showering. Analyzing data from a survey conducted among Swiss households in 2016 (n=5015), we find that individual values, practice-specific wants, and materials explain variations in routinized ECB performance. Furthermore, socio-demographic predictors shed light on cultural and status differences associated with routinized ECBs. This paper contributes to understanding associated factors of routinized ECBs by bridging practice theory and psychology-based factors.
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