While the benefits of student sense of belonging in higher education are well established, lower levels of belonging among minoritized ethnic students and fluctuations over time are frequently reported. However, most research focuses on the wider institution, overlooking the department as the primary setting for meaningful interpersonal interactions that foster belonging. Using students' 'home' department as the principal context for belonging, this longitudinal study employed psychometric measures across the first year of study to examine situated sense of belonging, exploring differences by ethnicity and changes in belonging over time. Relationships between belonging, involvement, and engagement were also explored. Contrary to previous findings, ethnicity had no effect on belonging. However, both belonging and involvement declined over time, whereas engagement remained stable. Engagement, but not involvement, emerged as a significant predictor of belonging. The absence of previously reported differences according to ethnicity highlights the importance of context, supporting the situated nature of student belonging and suggesting that departments may have greater potential than institutions to foster belonging, mitigate inequality, and support student wellbeing and success. The reported decline in students' belonging signals the need for sustained interventions that promote engagement and belonging beyond the initial stages of the students' entry into higher education.
The Classroom Participation Questionnaire (CPQ) was developed with school-aged d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students, but no Arabic version exists for university populations. This study adapted the CPQ into Arabic, extended it to d/Dhh university students, and examined its internal structure, reliability, and the associations of communication understanding with communication-related positive and negative affect. In total, 135 d/Dhh students at Saudi public universities completed the 26-item Arabic CPQ. Internal consistency was excellent (alpha = 0.91-0.96). Positive- and negative-affect items formed clear, separate factors, whereas instructor- and peer-understanding items were highly interrelated (r = 0.83) and were combined into one composite; a four-factor confirmatory model showed acceptable fit (CFI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.089). Communication understanding was strongly associated with positive affect (r = 0.69) and weakly with negative affect (r = 0.24), and the two affective dimensions were largely independent (r = 0.16). Female students reported more positive and less negative affect; hearing-device use added no independent association. The Arabic CPQ functioned reliably in this population. Because the understanding and positive-affect subscales share communication-specific content, their strong association partly reflects item overlap; the independence of the two affective dimensions suggests that accessibility and psychosocial support address distinct needs.
Deliberate fire-setting represents a significant environmental and public safety concern, yet research has primarily focused on identified firesetters and forensic or clinical populations. This study examined associations between childhood maltreatment and self-reported fire-related attitudes and tendencies in a Portuguese community sample, considering environmental identity as a potential indirect pathway and residential context in these associations. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 5077 Portuguese adults using self-report measures of childhood maltreatment, environmental identity, and fire-related attitudes and tendencies. Structural equation modeling and bootstrapped indirect-effect analyses were complemented by multigroup path analyses across rural, suburban, and urban settings. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect were directly associated with higher levels of fire-related attitudes and tendencies. Significant indirect associations through connectedness with nature were observed for emotional abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect, whereas protection of nature was involved in a specific indirect association with emotional neglect. Structural associations were largely comparable across residential contexts, despite modest group differences in construct levels. These findings suggest that developmental adversity and psychological relationships with nature are relevant correlates of fire-related attitudes and tendencies, while causal interpretations and inferences about actual fire-setting behavior remain unwarranted.
Ethical leadership research has predominantly focused on its consequences for followers and organizations. Adopting an actor-centric, identity-based perspective, this research examines how ethical leadership behavior relates to leaders' own emotional experiences through moral pride and how this process varies with core self-evaluation and burnout. Three studies using complementary methods tested the proposed relationships. Study 1 showed that unethical leadership behavior significantly reduced moral pride relative to the control and ethical conditions, whereas ethical behavior did not significantly increase moral pride relative to the control condition; CSE moderated the effect involving unethical behavior. Study 2 found significant indirect effects of ethical leadership behavior on positive and negative emotions through moral pride, with CSE moderating the relationship between ethical leadership behavior and moral pride. Study 3, using experience sampling, revealed exploratory conditional patterns across burnout levels: under relatively low burnout, the indirect relationship through moral pride was more evident for positive emotions, whereas under relatively high burnout, the negative indirect relationship with negative emotions was more pronounced. Together, these findings specify moral pride as a self-conscious emotional mechanism and highlight the relevance of individual and resource-related conditions in this process.
Low engagement with digital technologies is increasingly recognized as a health-related correlate in later life, yet the psychosocial variables linking it to mental and cognitive health remain unclear. Guided by the stress-process model, this cross-sectional study examined whether the associations of low digital engagement (LDE) with depressive symptoms and probable cognitive impairment were consistent with indirect pathways through self-perceived burden, self-perceived uselessness, and loneliness. We analyzed data from 1703 community-dwelling adults aged 55 to 85 years in Shanghai, China, collected between 2022 and 2023. Two path models specified self-perceived burden and self-perceived uselessness as parallel first-stage mediators and loneliness as a second-stage mediator: a linear model for depressive symptoms (CES-D-10) and a logit model for probable cognitive impairment (AD8 >= 2), each adjusting for sociodemographic, lifestyle, and health covariates (5000 bootstrap replications). Greater LDE was associated with more depressive symptoms (b = 0.062, 95% CI: 0.011, 0.113) and higher odds of probable cognitive impairment (OR = 1.040 per point, 95% CI: 1.014, 1.067). For depressive symptoms, the total indirect association accounted for 75.2% of the total association: significant specific indirect components included burden (30.3%), uselessness (15.6%), and the serial chains via burden and loneliness (8.7%) and via uselessness and loneliness (7.0%). The direct association was not statistically significant. For probable cognitive impairment, the direct association remained significant, and the significant indirect components were limited to the burden route. Formal contrasts indicated no significant difference between the burden and uselessness routes. The association between LDE and loneliness was attenuated to non-significance once the self-evaluative variables were included. Reverse models fit the data equally well. These cross-sectional associations generate hypotheses for future longitudinal and intervention research in rapidly digitizing urban settings.
