Strong Social Relationships Research Articles

The Chinese Population's Regulation of Emotions for a Healthy Life

Objective: Our aim was to determine the impact of health literacy on the Chinese population's regulation of emotions and the outcomes of such control. Methods: We collected cross-sectional data from the Chinese community (N=1,267) using a Likert scale questionnaire. We employed SPSS to check data normality and made estimations using confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis via AMOS. Results: Health literacy significantly influences regulation of emotions. We found that emotions influence mental well-being, forming strong arguments, social relationships, and positive arguments. Conclusions: The Chinese government should provide health literacy opportunities to the public to have a favorable influence on health behavior. Training for the promoting health literacy is important to influence community health behavior. The regulated emotions in the Chinese community can be a way forward to improve health status. Similarly, regulated emotions help to improve arguments for better social relationships.

Supportive Interpersonal Interactions and Affective Experiences during Exam Periods

Examinations, a salient stressor for undergraduates, arouse negative emotions that can hinder performance. Supportive social relationships may be advantageous during exam periods given that social baseline theory proposes that strong social relationships help one manage stressors effectively and efficiently. This experience sampling study examined the roles of two facets of supportive relationships, emotional closeness and interpersonal emotion regulation (ER), in daily affect around exam days and in perceived exam performance. A sample of 191 Canadian undergraduates completed baseline measures and daily prompts for one month. Baseline measures gauged emotional closeness and interpersonal ER; daily prompts assessed perceived emotional closeness, negative affect (NA), positive affect (PA), and perceptions of performance. Students demonstrated a pattern of worse affect when exams approached and an improvement of affect in the days that followed exams. Specifically, they reported higher daily NA on the two days before exam days compared to days with no recent or upcoming exams. Further, students reported lower daily NA post-exams compared to before exams. Additionally, we found lower self-reported daily PA on the two days before exams compared to days with no recent or upcoming exams, and higher daily PA post-exams compared to before exams. Notably, trait use of some interpersonal ER strategies interacted with exam period: students who reported higher use of these strategies demonstrated smaller differences in PA across the days before and after exams (e.g., smaller dip in PA before exams) compared to students who reported lower use of these strategies. We found some evidence of interpersonal ER serving a more limited role in NA during exam periods. Furthermore, most interpersonal ER strategies at baseline and emotional closeness before an exam predicted perceiving exam performance less negatively. The present findings suggest that prosocial interpersonal processes may help students better manage their subjective experiences during stressful midterm exam periods.

Differences in Multi-Dimensional Well-Being Among Factory Workers: Evidence from Six Countries

This paper presents cross-cultural comparisons of well-being among factory workers, as measured by the six well-being domains of happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability. Relative ranks of well-being domains across examined groups of workers are also compared. Results are based on survey data from factory workers in Cambodia, China, Mexico, Poland, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Average well-being scores are higher among factory workers in Mexico, China, and Cambodia than in the U.S., Poland, and Sri Lanka across all domains except financial and material stability. Close social relationships were the highest ranked domain in Cambodia and China but ranked much lower (5th) in the U.S. Meaning and purpose, as well as character and virtue were highly ranked across the board. Strong social relationships seem to thrive in contexts where financial insecurity is high.

The influence of strong social ties on the choice of long-term care model for middle-aged and older adults in China.

With the acceleration of population aging in China, the care of middle-aged and older adults has become the focus of social attention. As China is an "acquaintance society," strong social relations play an important role in residents' access to information and resource allocation, which has an impact on the choice of long-term care models for middle-aged and older adults. Therefore, based on the 19,728 samples from the 2018 CHARLS Phase I data, an empirical analysis was conducted using a logistic dichotomous model, which showed that both kinship (p < 0.01) and friendship (p < 0.01) among social relationships positively influenced the choice of social care models for middle-aged and older adults. The analysis of the heterogeneity showed that the choice of long-term care models was significantly influenced by strong social relationships in the central and western regions and rural areas (p < 0.01). On the basis of this, the transmission mechanism of strong social relationships was further analyzed in conjunction with the further construction of the SIRS Contagion Model, which was used to describe the information transmission process. The results showed that residents who attached importance to strong social ties were more likely to incur medical transfer expenditure, thus further increasing their own demand for the formal care model. The policy implications of this study are to promote the coordinated development of long-term formal care and strong social relations, to further promote the socialization of the formal care model while relying on traditional family care, and to build a multi-level and diversified long-term care system for middle-aged and older adults.

Financial decision-making behaviors of Ethnic Tibetan Households based on mental accounting

Ethnic Tibetans (ETs) typically reside in the remote plateaus of China and possess strong cultural and spiritual values. Their financial decision-making is influenced by economic and physical factors, unique culture, social norms, and psychological motivators. We conducted an in-person survey of 480 randomly selected ET households across four provinces in rural China. The survey data was analyzed using three different econometric models—probit, ordered probit, and ranked ordered logit—to examine the choice of borrowing from formal or informal credit sources, the number of sources borrowed from, and repayment priority. Our findings indicate that mental accounting plays a significant role in the financial decision-making process of ET households. Additionally, we find that the informal credit source is strongly associated with the financial decisions of ET households. The majority of loans from formal financial institutions are used to meet daily needs, as opposed to purchasing productive inputs. Our results also suggest that strong social relationships and religious beliefs prevent households from defaulting, and that loans from formal financial sources receive repayment priority. China would benefit from promoting inclusive finance and encouraging the adoption of improved agricultural practices to support the prosperity of ET and other minority communities.

Gender identity services must better integrate members of transgender people's social networks in care

Gender identity services must better integrate members of transgender people's social networks in care

Health Literacy, Social Networks, and Health Outcomes among Mental Health Clubhouse Members in Hawai'i.

Health literacy is the ability to obtain and utilize health information to make health-related decisions and to navigate health systems. Although health literacy has traditionally been understood as an individual-level construct, current research is revealing the impact that social networks can have on health literacy. To date, no studies have examined associations between health literacy and social networks among people with serious mental illness (PWSMI), who are at high risk of physical illness and premature mortality. To begin to fill this gap, this study explores associations between health literacy, relationships with health discussion partners, and self-reported health outcomes in a racially diverse sample of Clubhouse members in Hawai'i. Clubhouses are community mental health centers that promote recovery from mental illness through destigmatization, meaningful activity, and strong social relationships. Health literacy was assessed using two single-item screeners (SILS). In a sample of 163 members, 56.2% reported adequate ability to understand health-related instructions or pamphlets, and 43.3% reported adequate confidence filling out medical forms independently. This is consistent with other health literacy studies with PWSMI in the United States, and indicates lower health literacy within this group than is reported in national averages. Multivariate logistic regression revealed a larger Clubhouse staff social network and completing high school were significantly associated with requiring less help to read materials. Higher age, male gender, and being Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander were associated with less confidence filling out medical forms, while higher self-efficacy was associated with higher confidence filling out medical forms. This study provides preliminary evidence that relationships fostered within Clubhouses are associated with health literacy among PWSMI, and highlights the need for more research to examine how social networks and health literacy interventions can be leveraged in community mental health settings to improve health outcomes within this vulnerable population.

Respecting the Manning Family: Jane Manning James and Her Family in Wilton, Connecticut

Respecting the Manning Family: Jane Manning James and Her Family in Wilton, Connecticut

Financial information, physical proximity and COVID: The experience of Asian sell-side equity research analysts

The need for physical proximity and face-to-face communication in financial information flows is contested. But the movement restrictions imposed across Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the elevated information needs as financial markets became stressed, provided the unique circumstances for a natural experiment to test the extent to which physical interaction is important in the origination and distribution of financial information. Drawing upon 70 interviews undertaken across Asia during 2021, primarily with sell-side analysts who act as information intermediaries in the financial ecosystem, this article provides evidence that physical proximity and face-to-face communication remains highly valued, particularly when accessing information embedded in informal local networks and originated through reciprocal client relationships. Analysts physically restricted from contacts at corporates and within their associated operating environments, reported a degradation of knowledge, especially versus more proximate competitors. The enforced physical separation also weakened previously strong social and reciprocal relationships with clients, even those co-located in the same city. Although these trends may be gradual and incremental rather than dramatic, they are persistent and self-reinforcing, and demonstrate the continued benefits of proximity and face-to-face interaction, with longer-term implications for financial geographies.

Reduced injury risk links sociality to survival in a group-living primate

Sociality has been linked to a longer lifespan in many mammals, including humans. Yet, how sociality results in survival benefits remains unclear. Using 10 years of data and over 1,000 recorded injuries in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), we tested two injury-related mechanisms by which social status and affiliative partners might influence survival. Injuries increased individual risk of death by 3-fold in this dataset. We found that sociality can affect individuals' survival by reducing their risk of injury but had no effect on the probability of injured individuals dying. Both males and females of high social status (measured as female matrilineal rank and male group tenure) and females with more affiliative partners (estimated using the number of female relatives) experienced fewer injuries and thus were less likely to die. Collectively, our results offer rare insights into one mechanism that can mediate the well-known benefits of sociality on an individual's fitness.

A Systematic Literature Review on Citizen Awareness of Energy

Education is the key to sustaining our natural resources. Thus, community awareness is extremely important in order to make changes and reduce climate change, specifically global warming, and to curb the increase of carbon dioxide emissions which have caused the greenhouse effect. Although there are various studies on public awareness of energy literacy, analytically reviewing works on this research topic has been challenging as scholars have yet to integrate the SLR review technique into the process. This article intends to perform a systematic literature review on how to increase the public’s knowledge of energy literacy. The systematic literature review method comprised five key procedures guided by the review protocol. The process involved formulating the research questions, identifying the searching and screening methods, deciding the inclusion and exclusion criteria, appraising content quality, and extracting data. The articles for review were retrieved from established databases, specifically Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). Thematic analysis of the articles discovered five main themes, which were (1) energy literacy; (2) renewable energy; (3) programmes, training, and campaigns; (4) fostering strong social relationships in teaching energy literacy; and (5) teaching techniques. These five themes were divided into 11 sub-themes. Findings from this systematic review will provide in-depth info to our community and specifically to educationalists, enabling them to develop more effective, efficient, and sustainable strategies that will shape future globally competent citizens in justifying and adapting energy literacy issues.

Choral singing and dementia: Exploring musicality as embodied and relational accomplishment

This study explored the impact of participation in Voices in Motion (ViM), an intergenerational community choir program that involved persons with dementia, care partners, and high school students in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Data came from interviews with 23 duets, each consisting of a person with dementia and their care partner; additionally, five focus groups with 29 students across two ViM choirs were conducted. Choir rehearsals and concerts were also observed. The analysis revealed that those with dementia have an embodied ability to fully participate in the choir and perform songs despite cognitive decline and memory loss. Involvement in the choirs also facilitated the emergence of strong social relationships among participants while students reported gaining a deeper understanding of the everyday experiences of living with dementia. Through well-attended concerts and performances at public events, ViM also helped re-humanize persons living with dementia by challenging the narrative of decline and its associated stigma.

Fragmentary embeddedness: Challenges for alternative food networks in Guangzhou, China

Alternative food networks (AFNs) have been viewed as being more deeply embedded in the fabric of places and the social relations of their food systems than conventional food networks, and have been regarded as ‘spaces of hope’ for addressing sustainability challenges associated with global food systems. This paper argues that embeddedness, however, is contingent and shifting rather than an intrinsic quality, and is shaped by the cultures of production, trade, and consumption in particular places. This paper evaluates challenges that emerging AFNs in Guangzhou, China, are confronting relating to their embeddedness in place. The paper is underpinned by research involving interviews and focus groups with key food system actors and stakeholders in Guangzhou, including government officials, organic farmers, retailers, and non-governmental organizations. It demonstrates that AFNs in Guangzhou achieve only ‘fragmentary embeddedness’ in local cultures and systems of production, retail, and consumption. Despite strong social relationships established by a few successful farms and their loyal consumer groups, AFNs more broadly have struggled to embed themselves in the social and cultural fabric of the city and its commercial foodscapes. In terms of territorial embeddedness, the association of AFNs with western values, which do not always translate into Guangzhou's production and retail systems, can limit their embeddedness and scaling up in this context. The split between ‘new’ farmers (i.e., educated and urban-rooted producers ‘returning to the land’) and common farmers (i.e., local peasants) further exacerbates the difficulty of integrating AFNs in rural communities. Regarding social embeddedness, AFNs struggle to meet local consumer preferences regarding food appearances, quality, and taste, and therefore consumer trust in them is limited. In terms of institutional embeddedness, AFNs lack government policy support, despite the alignment of their missions with national strategies. More efforts are needed to deepen the embeddedness of AFNs in Guangzhou's food system and cultures if they are to respond effectively to China's food crisis and wider sustainability issues.

Strategi Petani Sawah Dalam Upaya Pemenuhan Kebutuhan Hidup (Studi Pada Masyarakat Petani Penggarap di Desa Paccellekang Kecamatan Patalassang Kabupaten Gowa)

In this study, the aim of this study was to see how the farmers' strategies or methods were used to meet the needs or survival that occurred to smallholders in Paccelekang Village, Patalassang District, Gowa Regency. This study uses a qualitative method. This research is located in Paccelekang Kacan Patalassang Village. The instrument in this study used observation and interviews. Furthermore, this study uses a triangulation and interaction model approach aimed at analyzing the data obtained from existing research. The results of this study indicate that the Rice Farmer's Strategy in Efforts to Fulfill the Living Needs of Cultivators in Paccellekang Village, Patalassang District, Gowa Regency, there are 2 forms of farmers, namely farmers working on upper level and middle level rice fields. Upper-level cultivators have the advantage that their large farm gardens can raise cattle. Meanwhile, the middle-level farmers from the agricultural products they get are only able to meet the daily needs of their families because they work on their plantations from their own land. However, the advantages of these farmers are that they are able to build strong social relations and relationships with fellow farmers and outside of farmer workers. From the education sector, on average, these farmers only graduated from junior high and high school, but with the times, farmers have started to care about the existing level of education. This is shown by the children of several farmers who have started their education up to the tertiary level and even at the master's level.

How the COVID-19 lockdown affects social relationships in Bangladesh: A social media-based cross-sectional study.

For controlling the rapid spread of COVID‐19 infections, the Bangladesh Government imposed lockdown to ensure social distancing among the mass. The study aimed to investigate the effect of COVID‐19 lockdown on social relationships among Bangladeshi nationals. A social media‐based cross‐sectional study was conducted from May 15 through June 7, 2020. The study used a survey questionnaire to ascertain the people's perception on COVID‐19 pandemic and its associated lockdown, and on how the lockdown affected their social relationships. In this study, social relationships referred to the connections between family members, friends, and relatives. Linear regression was employed to determine the predictors of social relationships. A total of 352 survey responses were collected, out of which 64.2 per cent reported that their social relationships became stronger during lockdown. Age, marital status, occupation, and financial condition exhibited significant associations with social relationships. More specifically, young through middle‐aged, married, housewives, and financially solvent people had a significant association with having strong social relationships. This study found that the COVID‐19 lockdown revealed a positive impact on the social relationships of Bangladeshis. Healthy bonding and cordial support of family and friends are understood to have helped them to mitigate their mental stress, leading to positive health implications.

Acceptance Theory of Family Caregiving.

Acceptance of roles in the care of older adults by a family caregiver depends on factors emanating from commitment to familial relationships, widespread cultural expectation, and debt of gratitude. This study aims to develop a theory that explains the acceptance of the role of caregiving of the older adults by the family caregiver necessary to predict behavioral adaptation and control caring phenomenon that favors successful meeting of caring expectation across trajectory phases and transitions. A deductive axiomatic approach to theory generation was utilized, resulting in four axioms that served as bases for four propositions. Acceptance Theory of Family Caregiving implies that older adults who expect their children to take care of them as they age have cultural influence and that the acceptance of the role will determine the caregiver's acceptance of consequences in the form of physical, economical, psychological, and spiritual aspects. In terms of preparedness, family members who accept the possibility of the decline of their older adults are more likely to be assume caregiving roles efficaciously. In the process that family members face in this so-called trajectory caregiving process, resources play a significant role. The developed theory suggests that the care of the older adult in the family caregiving process is determined by the acceptance of role assumption by the family caregiver across trajectory phases. This study highlights the vital implication of acceptance of role assumption to the outcomes of the caregiving process with respect to older adult care, prevention of family caregiver burden, and establishment of strong familial and social relationships.

Analysis of the emotional vocabulary in a sample of secondary education students

Introduction. Numerous studies prove the importance of emotional intelligence in promoting emotional regulation, self-knowledge, empathy and the ability to develop strong social relationships. Some of them highlight the fundamental role of emotional vocabulary, being the good development of this a key factor to name, interpret and regulate our emotions correctly. &#x0D; Method. This study focused on knowing the differences in written expression of short-term emotional vocabulary according to age and gender, in a sample of high school students between 12 and 16 years old, with a total of 442 participants, belonging to the region of Lleida, Spain. &#x0D; &#x0D; Results. The results showed that there was a significant increase in the number of negative words as age increased, as well as a significant decrease in ambiguous words. Differences were also detected in the expression of emotions according to gender, with girls reporting a greater number of both positive and negative words. &#x0D; &#x0D; Discussion and Conclusion. In conclusion, this study proves that there are differences in the expression of emotional vocabulary according to the age and gender of students.

Pillars of Salt: Pastoral Care with Adolescents with a Migration Experience

“Lot’s wife looked back”. This detail in the migration journey of Lot and his family illustrates being caught in between needing to move forward but wanting to look back. Many adolescents who have migrated to Europe experience in-betweenness. This article begins from their reported practices of lived religion. This interpretive phenomenological analysis study brings together the domains of lived religion, migration theology, and adolescent development to better understand how pastoral care may address this liminal state. Looking at their descriptions of the presence and absence of important relationships, religious practices, and the experience of the divine shows the importance of these three areas working together. In the absence of strong proximal social relationships, many adolescents with a religious identity who have migrated to Europe turn their attention to the divine Godself. Releasing someone caught in between two places may require an awareness of the concepts of grief and loss, post-trauma theology, and skills in orienting and making social connections. One goal of pastoral care for adolescents who have experienced migration can be to provide a path out of the liminal in-between space to a place where there is room to flourish.

ANALISIS METODE PEMBELAJARAN DARING SELAMA PANDEMI COVID-19 TERHADAP PERKEMBANGAN KOGNITIF ANAK BERDASAR TEORI PERKEMBANGAN KOGNITIF ANAK PIAGET

This study aims to examine the analysis of e-learning methods during the COVID-19 pandemic on children's cognitive development based on Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Education for children is a systematic effort to deliver children to a bright future. In essence, every child is the future successor of the civilization of the Indonesian nation with its role as a supply of human resources. Whereas on the other hand, efforts to fulfill children's rights to receive education when related to current conditions have turned out to be experiencing obstacles due to the Covid-19 pandemic that has hit all parts of the world, including Indonesia. Official data released by the Government of Indonesia as of August 15, 2021, as many as 213 countries have been infected with Covid-19, of which 139,226,143 have been confirmed positive and 2,989,984 have died,. If we take some of the characteristics of children at the stage of Piaget's cognitive development associated with online school policies, then there are things that need to be anticipated, namely the cognitive phase of children directly requiring school education, even though literally schools are interpreted only as institutions or buildings used for learning activities. and teach according to the level of education (elementary school, middle school and high school), but actually the school is not only an institution that provides subject matter and physical buildings but also as a laboratory for children's mindset and mentality. This study uses the library method where in collecting data information with documentation techniques, namely seeking data on relevant matters from various sources such as documents, books, scientific journals and news. The result of this research is that online learning on children's cognitive development directly experiences obstacles. This is evidenced from the concepts and theories of Piaget's cognitive development where the hallmark of cognitive development is the existence of strong interpersonal and social relationships with the environment. Because basically the learning process is not only limited to the process of delivering information and knowledge, but also there must be reciprocal interaction between participants and teachers so that there is a change in behavior and knowledge in a concrete direction.&#x0D; &#x0D; Keyword: covid-19, Education, e-learning methods, Piaget, school

The primary health care environment and the impact on motivation and stress in nurses

Objective: The focus of this study was to investigate the possible occupational stress the nurses perceived that in Basic Health Units (BHUs) and assess the major factors that motivate these employees’ inside these primary healthcare centers. Methodology: Data was collected from 70 nurses working in 61 BHUs distributed in the South of Brazil. The stress was measured with the Nurses' Stress Inventory (NSI), and the determination of motivation was performed using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The research has been taken up with special reference to administrative/assistance nurses. Results: The investigation showed that nurses are predominantly female (89.5%) and 80.0% work equally in assistant care and administrative functions. Moreover, the data showed that 89.4% of nurses present moderate to higher stress scores as a consequence of the intrinsic work factors. Investigating the motivation, the higher level in the Maslow hierarchy was belonging, this could be related to the fact BHUs are inserted in communities with strong social connections and relationships with the population. Conclusion: Knowing the main factors responsible for stress in nurses at the BHUs are essential for future strategies to improve working conditions.