Parental unemployment and youth life satisfaction: The moderating roles of satisfaction with family life

Abstract While Europe is slowly recovering from the economic recession, its effects on labour markets are still visible. The number of jobless families has increased and previous research has shown that unemployment can affect the wellbeing of both parents and their children. In this study we explored the links between parental unemployment and youth life satisfaction by considering the potential moderating roles played by satisfaction with family life and perceived family wealth. We used descriptive statistics, correlations, simple moderation and moderated moderation models of regression on data from a representative sample of 3937 Portuguese students (Mage = 13.9 years; SD ± 1.7; 48 % boys). Results showed that the negative effects of parental unemployment on youth life satisfaction were moderated by youth perceived satisfaction with family life but not by perceived wealth. This suggested that during family unemployment, young people satisfied with their family life are less vulnerable to the negative effects of parental unemployment on their life satisfaction. The relationship between parental unemployment and youth well-being requires further research, especially during periods of labour market crisis.

Avaliação de um programa de formação parental: “Trampolim"

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada no ISPA - Instituto Universitário para obtenção de grau de Mestre na especialidade de Psicologia Clínica

Qualidade de vida, percepção de saúde, resiliência, auto-regulação e suporte social nos adolescentes portugueses com a doencça crónica

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia na área de especialidade Psicologia da Saúde

Young people's well-being and the economic crisis: How does parental unemployment and family wealth affect the downturn experience?

Background: Portugal is among the European countriesmost severely hit by the economic recession and the fifth with the highest unemployment rate. Given that adolescents' development is highly influenced by their living contexts, monitoring the repercussions of the economic recession is essential for the evaluation and improvement of their current and future public health. Objective: To investigate youth perceived repercussions of the economic recession, its association with life satisfaction, as well as to assess differences across parental employment status and family perceived wealth. Methods: Data were drawn from the Portuguese 2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged children survey, aWHO collaborative cross-national study, with a nationally representative sample of 2748 students (Mage = 14.7 years ± 1.2; 48% boys). Descriptive statistics and linear regression models were performed. Results: Levels of life satisfaction are lower when young people perceive that the economic recession generated negative lifestyle changes. Having unemployed parents was found to be significantly associated with perceiving such repercussions and family wealth to decrease the perception of repercussions of the recession. Conclusions: Findings enhance our understanding of how Portuguese youth are being affected by the socioeconomic conditions surrounding them. Such information contributes to improve future research and also allow some considerations about the policies aimed at protecting young people'swellbeing during a period of high unemployment and socioeconomic downturn.

“Não sou apenas funaná e cachupa” – um estudo sobre integração e sentimento de comunidade dos jovens cabo-verdianos na sociedade de acolhimento

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada ao ISPA - Instituto Universitário

Representações sociais do envelhecimento ativo num olhar genderizado

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar as representações sociais do envelhecimento ativo, procurando detetar os impactos das conceções diferenciadas de homens e mulheres idosos. Foi desenvolvido um estudo de coorte transversal. Foram inquiridas 123 pessoas idosas (M=76,84; DP=8,46). Utilizámos para aceder às evocações sobre o envelhecimento ativo a Técnica de Associação Livre de Palavras. As representações que emergiram com maior frequência foram a “família”, “passeio”, “convívio” e “saúde”. Foi possível destacar diferenças na representação social do envelhecimento ativo a partir de um olhar genderizado. Das evocações exclusivas do sexo masculino a evocação proeminente ancora no “desporto”, enquanto no sexo feminino a “atividade doméstica” predomina. Ambos os sexos elegeram a “família” como evocação proeminente na representação social do envelhecimento ativo. As mulheres, refletindo os papéis que desempenharam ao longo da sua vida parecem assumir que um envelhecimento ativo representa a execução das tarefas que sempre fizeram, centrando-se muitas das suas evocações em conteúdos de cariz familista, onde o papel de cuidadoras se destaca. As atividades de carácter instrumental e associadas à esfera privada, como as tarefas domésticas emergem com maior proeminência. No caso dos homens, a componente familista é também evocada, emergindo concomitantemente atividades de lazer.

Teste de um modelo preditor de satisfação com a vida em adultos idosos

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada ao ISPA - Instituto Universitário

Da sobrevivência física à sobrevivência mental : aspectos do funcionamento psíquico em ex-combatentes da guerra colonial portuguesa

Tese de Doutoramento apresentada ao ISPA - Instituto Universitário

Impact of oral health on health-related quality of life : A cross-sectional study

Background: Despite the consensus regarding the existence of a relationship between “impacts on oral health” and “health-related quality of life”, this relationship, considering the latent nature of these variables, is still poorly investigated. Thus, we performed this study in order to determine the magnitude of the impacts of oral health, demographic and symptom/clinical variables on the health-related quality of life in a Brazilian sample of dental patients. Methods: A total of 1,007 adult subjects enrolled in the School of Dentistry of São Paulo State University (UNESP) - Araraquara Campus for dentistry care between September/2012 and April/2013, participated. 72.4 % were female. The mean age was 45.7 (SD = 12.5) years. The Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) and the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) were used. The demographic and symptom/clinical variables collected were gender, age, economic status, presence of pain and chronic disease. The impact of studied variables on health-related quality of life were evaluated with a structural equation model, considering the factor “Health” as the central construct. The fit of the model was first analyzed by the evaluation of the goodness of fit indices (χ 2 /df ≤ 2.0, CFI and TLI ≥ 0.90 and RMSEA < 0.10) and the evaluation of the variables’ impact over health-related quality of life was based on the statistical significance of causal paths (β), evaluated by z tests, for a significance level of 5 %. Results: We observed adequate fit of the model to the data (χ 2 /df = 3.55; CFI = 0.95; TLI = 0.94; RMSEA = 0.05). The impacts on oral health explained 28.0 % of the variability of the health-related quality of life construct, while the total variance explained of the model was 39.0 %. For the demographic and symptom/clinical variables, only age, presence of pain and chronic disease showed significant impacts (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The oral health, age, presence of pain and chronic disease of individuals had significant influence on health-related quality of life.