I am better because of your expectation: Examining how left-behind status moderates the mediation effect of perceived parental educational expectation on cognitive ability among Chinese rural students.

BACKGROUND: Chinese rural students have been documented to have relatively delayed cognitive development. From an ecological system perspective, empirical studies have identified the significant effect of the proximal environment on Chinese rural students' cognitive development. Yet, little do we know the mechanism behind that. More importantly, how the mechanism differs among rural students with different left-behind characteristics remains obscure. METHODS: Drawing longitudinal data from a nationally representative survey, this study examines the interrelations between rural students' parental educational expectation perception, their own educational expectation, and cognitive ability. Two models were examined using path analysis. The first mediation model tests the mediating effect of educational expectation between the association of parental educational expectation perception and cognitive ability, while the second moderated mediation identifies the moderating effect of rural students' left-behind status on the association between their parental educational expectation perception and educational expectation. RESULTS: The first mediation analysis reveals that rural students' perception of parental educational expectation is positively correlated with their educational expectation, which further positively correlated with their cognitive ability. The following moderated mediation analysis suggests that students' left-behind status significantly moderated the effect of their perceived parental educational expectations on their own educational expectation. CONCLUSIONS: Chinese rural students' perception of parental educational expectation affects their cognitive ability through their own educational expectations. The number of migrant parents within a family further moderates the indirect effect of education expectation.

Does "who I am" influence "how I feel"? Cultural identity and mental health among Hong Kong Chinese adolescents.

Securing a clear sense of identity is a critical issue in adolescence, yet the role that cultural identity plays in the well-being of youths remains unclear. This study aims to examine the relationship between cultural identity and mental health among three groups of adolescents in Hong Kong with different residential backgrounds. Data came from a cross-sectional survey with 2180 4th-9th grade students in Hong Kong. Cultural identity was assessed by whether the youths identify themselves as local Hong Kong people, mainland Chinese, both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese, or confused about which group to belong to. Mental health was assessed by self-esteem, mental well-being, happiness, social anxiety, and depression. Multiple linear regression was performed to examine the relationship between cultural identity and mental health, adjusting for sociodemographic variables. The regression results suggested adolescents with confused cultural identity scored lower in all positive indicators of mental health compared with those with a clear cultural identification. No significant association was found between cultural identity and social anxiety/depression. Uncertainty in cultural identification may be detrimental for the mental health of adolescents living in a multicultural society. Interventions may consider cultivating clear cultural identities among adolescents to promote their mental health.

Trauma exposure and depression among frontline health professionals during COVID-19 outbreak in China: the role of intrusive rumination and organizational silence.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals bared particularly high risk and stress during the COVID-19 outbreak. Previous studies have demonstrated that healthcare professionals exposed to COVID-19 incurred various affective disorders including depressive symptoms, anxiety, insomnia, and distress. However, the mechanism underlying the relationship between trauma exposure and depressive symptom among frontline hospital staff has yet to be investigated. This study aims to assess the prevalence of depressive symptoms among frontline healthcare professionals in Shenzhen, China, and elucidate the complex relationship among trauma exposure, intrusive rumination, and organizational silence. METHODS: The data of this study were collected through a time-lagged panel questionnaire survey with three rounds of measurements from February 2020 to May 2020 at an infectious disease hospital in Shenzhen, in which all the confirmed cases of COVID-19 patients were accommodated. Based on cluster sampling design, a total of 134 frontline healthcare professionals directly involved in providing diagnosis, treatment, and nursing services for COVID-19 patients completed three times of web survey. The depressive symptom and trauma exposure were measured via the 12-items General Health Questionnaire and the Explosion Exposure Questionnaire respectively. A moderated mediation model examined the complex interplay among the major study variables. Gender and working year were included as control variables. RESULTS: Trauma exposure was significantly associated with depression in frontline healthcare professionals. Intrusive rumination mediated the effect of trauma exposure on the depressive symptom, which was moderated by organizational silence. Intrusive rumination presented a more substantial impact on depression while organization silence was lower. CONCLUSIONS: This research demonstrates that intrusive rumination and organizational silence are imperative for predicting the depressive symptoms among the frontline healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Promoting Psychosocial Adjustments of Cross-Border Students in Hong Kong: A Resilience and Social Capital Framework.

Nearly 28,000 children, ranging from kindergarten to secondary-school age, commute between mainland China and Hong Kong for education on a daily basis. They are known as cross-border students (CBS)-those who legally hold permanent Hong Kong citizenship and attend schools in Hong Kong, but reside in mainland China, a unique population in the context of cross-border migration. Social media has reported various challenges faced by CBS, but systematic research on this population is limited. This study proposes a resilience and social capital framework to understand the psychosocial adjustments of CBS when faced with different levels of adversities. Using data from a cross-sectional survey of 445 CBS, this study examines how family and community social capital promote the self-esteem, mental well-being, happiness, and life satisfaction of CBS through individual resilience in the face of single and multiple adversities. The results of structural equation modelling suggest that family social capital serves as a significant promotive and protective factor for the self-esteem, mental well-being, happiness, and life satisfaction of CBS in the presence of both single and multiple adversities, while community social capital can promote only mental well-being of CBS in the presence of single or no adversity. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for researchers, parents, and service professionals are also discussed.

Online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: the wellbeing of Chinese migrant children-a case study in Shanghai.

Introduction: This study uses Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model as its theoretical framework to consider the findings of an investigation of the emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of Chinese migrant children and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in urban areas. This study expands our perspective by combining the views of students, parents, and teachers to explore the emotional, social and physical wellbeing of migrant children in Shanghai who were participating in online learning during the COVID-19. Methods: Observation and semi-structured interviews were carried out to collect data for this case study. Thirty-one migrant children, nine parents, 10 teachers and a school principal from a Shanghai junior high school participated in this research. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results and Discussion: The findings indicated that although video-recorded lessons were high quality, it put pressure on migrant children due to the lessons containing only new material with no reviews and reduced opportunities for them to interact with their own teachers. In addition, the differences in study progress between the migrant children and the local children that showed up during the online learning, and neglect from teachers and policymakers, made the migrant children anxious, angry and confused about their future. Besides, parents install monitors at home to support their children's online learning, but it had the opposite effect and simply provoked increased conflicts between children and their parents. Finally, although the online lessons have affected the optical health of students, the subsequent additional cooking lessons have mitigated the optical health problem and strengthened the connections between home and school. Conclusion: The inequalities of education encountered by migrant children during the COVID-19 period have made them realize the disparities they have suffered in Shanghai. The exposure of this problem raises the prospect of a reform of educational policies for migrant children in the future.

Single-session intervention on growth mindset on negative emotions for university student mental health (U-SIGMA): a protocol of two-armed randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: The university years are a developmentally crucial phase and a peak period for the onset of mental disorders. The beliefs about the changeability of negative emotion may play an important role in help-seeking. The brief digital growth mindset intervention is potentially scalable and acceptable to enhance adaptive coping and help-seeking for mental health needs in university students. We adapted the Single-session Intervention on Growth Mindset for adolescents (SIGMA) to be applied in university students (U-SIGMA). This protocol introduces a two-armed waitlist randomized controlled trial study to examine the effectiveness and acceptability of U-SIGMA in promoting help-seeking among university students in the Greater Bay Area. METHODS: University students (N = 250, ages 18-25) from universities in the Greater Bay Area will be randomized to either the brief digital growth mindset intervention group or the waitlist control group. Participants will report on the mindsets of negative emotions, perceived control over anxiety, attitude toward help-seeking, physical activity, hopelessness, psychological well-being, depression, anxiety, and perceived stress at baseline and the 2-week and 8-week follow-ups through web-based surveys. A 30-min digital intervention will be implemented in the intervention group, with a pre- and post-intervention survey collecting intervention feedback, while the control group will receive the link for intervention after 8 weeks. DISCUSSION: This protocol introduces the implementation plan of U-SIMGA in multi-cities of the Greater Bay Area. The findings are expected to help provide pioneer evidence for the effectiveness and acceptability of the brief digital intervention for university students in the Chinese context and beyond and contribute to the development of accessible and effective prevention and early intervention for university students' mental health. TRIAL REGISTRATION: HKU Clinical Trials Registry: HKUCTR-3012; Registered 14 April 2023.  http://www.hkuctr.com/Study/Show/7a3ffbc0e03f4d1eac0525450fc5187e .

Understanding the effect of social capital on the depression of urban Chinese adolescents: an integrative framework.

Using data from an ongoing longitudinal study of 5,164 adolescents and their parents from seven cities in mainland China, this study investigated how social capital embedded in the family and the community, together with family human capital and financial capital, influenced the depressive symptoms of urban Chinese adolescents within an integrative framework. The structural equation modeling results suggested that higher community social capital was associated with lower level of adolescent depressive symptoms and was the strongest predictor among all these contextual factors. Family social capital played a significant role in mediating the effects of all other contextual factors on adolescent depressive symptoms. Unexpectedly, higher family financial capital predicted increased depressive symptoms both directly and indirectly through its negative effect on family social capital. As for gender, female adolescents reported more depressive symptoms as a result of less available family social capital. Implications of these findings for theory, practice, policy, and future research are discussed.

Trauma, Resilience, and Mental Health in Migrant and Non-Migrant Youth: An International Cross-Sectional Study Across Six Countries.

Resilience is a dynamic process of positive adaptation to significant adversity. While there has been substantial focus on risks and negative outcomes associated with youth migrancy, there is limited evidence of the relationship between the adversity of migration, and resilience, wellbeing, and positive mental health in adolescents. This international study aimed to explore the differences in resilience, wellbeing, and mental health behaviors in migrant and non-migrant adolescents tested across six countries (Australia, New Zealand, UK, China, South Africa, and Canada) with varying levels of trauma exposure. The study was a cross-sectional survey design with a convenience sample of 194 10-17 year old migrants and non-migrants. The migrant sample included both "internal" migrants (change of residence within a country) and "external" migrants (change of residence across national borders) for comparison. Across the sites, migrants reported a higher mean number of traumatic events for the past year than non-migrants, with internal migrants reporting more events than external migrants overall. South African adolescents reported a higher mean number of traumatic events for the past year than all other sites. External migrants reported higher resilience scores yet reduced prosocial behaviors relative to internal migrants and non-migrants, whereas both internal and external migrants reported higher peer problems than non-migrants. When considering the interacting effects of trauma, the presence or absence of trauma did not appear to impact migrant scores in terms of resilience, wellbeing, or conduct problems. In comparison, trauma-exposed non-migrants showed detriments relative to trauma-exposed migrant peers for all of these measures. In conclusion, the survey tool was found to be reliable and acceptable for use in international studies of different samples of adolescent migrants. Overall, migrant adolescents showed greater resilience resources than non-migrants and, although the migrants experienced more traumatic events, the impact of trauma on mental health outcomes was greater in the non-migrants. There is a need for further research with larger prospective sample sizes to investigate how levels of resilience and wellbeing vary over time and across countries, and the ways resilience can be promoted in adolescents exposed to trauma, regardless of migrancy status.

Perceived Social Change, Parental Control, and Family Relations: A Comparison of Chinese Families in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the United States.

This study examined the relationship between perceived social change, parental control and family relations in a sample of 419 4th and 5th grade children and their mothers who are of Chinese descent but reside in three different contexts: Los Angeles (LA), Hong Kong (HK), and Beijing (BJ). HK mothers endorsed the highest levels of psychological control and the lowest levels of autonomy support compared to BJ and LA mothers. Perceived social change as measured by mothers' endorsement of new values and ideologies was associated with increased use of both autonomy support and psychological control. Results of the mediation analyses suggested that perceived social change explained differences between LA and HK mothers in autonomy support, but group differences in psychological control were magnified when perceived social change was accounted for. Finally, whereas autonomy support was associated with higher levels of child perceived acceptance in HK and LA, psychological control was associated with greater family conflict in BJ and LA. Findings suggested that as families undergo urbanization or social change, it may shift the implications of traditional strategies that are intended to socialize the child toward interpersonal attunement. Overall, the study highlights the importance of moving beyond ethnic-group or cross-national comparisons to investigate the role of changing social and economic contexts in understanding differences in the use of parental control and their associations with family relations.

Social capital and the mental health of children in rural China with different experiences of parental migration.

Children migrating to urban cities with their parents and children left behind in rural counties by their migrant parents are two vulnerable populations resulting from the rural-urban migration in mainland China. Some of these children even have mixed experiences of being left-behind and being migrants at different times. This study aimed to investigate how the various experiences of being left-behind, migrant, or both, might influence the mental health of children in the context of rural China. Moreover, it investigated how these effects might be mediated by the stock of social capital in their family and neighborhood. Data used in this study came from a questionnaire survey with a school-based multi-stage random sample of 701 children (aged 8-17 years) living in the rural counties of Guizhou province in 2013. The structural equation modeling results suggested that, compared to those rural children who lived with both parents and have never experienced migration or being left-behind, children who are currently left-behind, either with or without previous experience of being a migrant, appeared to exhibit higher levels of depression. However, children who had previously been left-behind, but lived with both parents at the time of study, tended to experience fewer depressive symptoms. Parental migration also influenced children's mental health through the mediating effects of family and community social capital. These research findings imply developing intervention and prevention programs tailored to different groups of children in rural China with a focus on fostering the growth of social capital using various strategies.

Examining the association between social health insurance participation and patients' out-of-pocket payments in China: the role of institutional arrangement.

Previous work on the relationship between social health insurance (SHI) participation and patients' out-of-pocket payments (OOP) in China has overlooked the mediating mechanisms of the institutional arrangement. This study establishes a conceptual framework involving the reimbursement, behavior management and purchasing mechanisms to elaborate on the institutional arrangement of SHI in China. Using structural equation modeling, data on 1645 hospitalized patients obtained from a nationally representative survey in China are analyzed. The results show that the behavior management and purchasing mechanisms of SHI perform poorly, undermining the function of the reimbursement mechanism and mitigating the association between SHI participation and OOP. As a result, SHI participation has a weak negative or even no significant association with the OOP of hospitalized patients. This seems to contradict the principles of SHI, which aims to reduce people's OOP and enhance their wellbeing. These findings are expected to provide valuable insights to the ongoing healthcare reform process in China.

Social service utilization, sense of community, family functioning and the mental health of new immigrant women in Hong Kong.

Drawing upon a sample of 296 new immigrant women in Hong Kong, this study investigated how social service utilization, family functioning, and sense of community influenced the depressive symptoms of new immigrant women. Results of the structural equation modeling suggested that family functioning and sense of community were both significantly and negatively associated with the depression of new immigrant women. Utilization of community services also influenced the depression of immigrant women indirectly through the mediating effect of sense of community. Implications of the research findings for mental health intervention were discussed.

Longitudinal analysis of weight perception and psychological factors in Chinese adolescents.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate associations of overweight status and perception with trajectories of psychological distress in adolescents. METHODS: Longitudinal data for 6970 Chinese adolescents were included. The multivariate curve-of-factor latent growth curve models were adopted to examine trajectories of psychological distress symptoms and associations with overweight status and perception. RESULTS: After controlling for actual overweight status, psychological distress symptoms were weakly but significantly associated with overweight perception (γ = 0.08 for boys and γ = 0.10 for girls, P < 0.05) and misperception (γ = 0.06 for boys and γ = 0.09 for girls, P < 0.05). DISCUSSION: Our findings help understanding associations of overweight perception and psychological well being of adolescents.

Social networks and implementation of evidence-based practices in public youth-serving systems: a mixed-methods study.

BACKGROUND: The present study examines the structure and operation of social networks of information and advice and their role in making decisions as to whether to adopt new evidence-based practices (EBPs) among agency directors and other program professionals in 12 California counties participating in a large randomized controlled trial. METHODS: Interviews were conducted with 38 directors, assistant directors, and program managers of county probation, mental health, and child welfare departments. Grounded-theory analytic methods were used to identify themes related to EBP adoption and network influences. A web-based survey collected additional quantitative information on members of information and advice networks of study participants. A mixed-methods approach to data analysis was used to create a sociometric data set (n = 176) for examination of associations between advice seeking and network structure. RESULTS: Systems leaders develop and maintain networks of information and advice based on roles, responsibility, geography, and friendship ties. Networks expose leaders to information about EBPs and opportunities to adopt EBPs; they also influence decisions to adopt EBPs. Individuals in counties at the same stage of implementation accounted for 83% of all network ties. Networks in counties that decided not to implement a specific EBP had no extra-county ties. Implementation of EBPs at the two-year follow-up was associated with the size of county, urban versus rural counties, and in-degree centrality. Collaboration was viewed as critical to implementing EBPs, especially in small, rural counties where agencies have limited resources on their own. CONCLUSIONS: Successful implementation of EBPs requires consideration and utilization of existing social networks of high-status systems leaders that often cut across service organizations and their geographic jurisdictions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT00880126.

The protective functions of relationships, social support and self-esteem in the life satisfaction of children of migrant workers in Shanghai, China.

BACKGROUND: At present, China has approximately 20 million migrant school-aged children accompanying their parents in relocating to the cities. However, very little is known about them. Using a resilience framework, the present study attempted to examine the psychosocial factors affecting their life satisfaction in Shanghai, China. METHODS: A total of 625 migrant children were recruited from 10 schools in Shanghai through a cross-sectional survey design using multi-stage cluster sampling method. The questionnaire included measures of life satisfaction, self-esteem, social support, relationships at school and the parent-child and peer relationships. RESULTS: Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to explore the relative effects of different relationship domains, self-esteem and social support on the life satisfaction of migrant children. The results suggested that parent-child and peer relationships significantly influenced the life satisfaction of children of migrant workers. Relationships in school did not exert such effect. Both social support and self-esteem had significant effects on the life satisfaction of migrant children. CONCLUSIONS: Relationship factors, social support and self-esteem are critical factors affecting the life satisfaction of migrant children. The findings and implications were discussed in relation to developmental and migration-related issues and the social contexts of the lives of children of migrant workers in Shanghai, China.

Overweight, body image, and depression in Asian and Hispanic adolescents.

OBJECTIVES: To prospectively investigate associations between overweight and depressive symptoms in Asian and Hispanic adolescents. METHODS: Data included 780 Hispanic and 375 Asian students. Structural equation model was used to prospectively explore moderation effects of gender, ethnicity, and acculturation on associations of overweight, body image dissatisfaction, and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Significant mediation effect was found only in Asian girls (mediation effect = 0.16, P < 0.05) and girls with high acculturation (mediation effect = 0.17, P < 0.05). Overweight significantly predicted higher body image dissatisfaction, which in turn was significantly related to depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings help understanding the association of overweight and experience of depressive symptoms.