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People care about their own well-being, but also about the well-being of their families. It is currently however unknown how much people tend to value their own and their family’s wellbeing. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding across a larger sample size (N = 12,819) and a greater number of countries (N = 49), We found that the strength of the idealization of family over personal happiness preference was small (average Cohen’s ds = .20 with country levels varying from -.02 to almost .48), but ubiquitous, i.e., direction presented in 98% of the studied countries, 73-75% with statistical significance and < 2% variance across countries. We also found that the size of this effect did vary somewhat across cultural contexts. In Latin American cultures highest on relational mobility, the idealization of family over personal happiness was very small (average Cohen’s ds for Latin America = .15 and .18), while in Confucian Asia cultures lowest on relational mobility, this effect was closer to medium (ds > .40 and .30). Importantly, we did not find strong support for traditional theories in cross-cultural psychology that associate collectivism with greater prioritization of the family versus the individual; country level individualism-collectivism was not associated with variation in the idealization of family versus individual happiness. Our findings indicate that no matter how much various populists abuse the argument of “protecting family life” to disrupt emancipation, family happiness seems to be a pan-culturally phenomenon. Family well-being is a key ingredient of social fabric across the world, and should be acknowledged by psychology and well-being researchers, and by progressive movements too.

Past research has shown that economic inequality shapes individuals’ self-construals. However, it has been unclear which dimensions of self-construal are associated with and affected by economic inequality. A correlational (Study 1: N = 264) and an experimental study (Study 2: N = 532) provided converging evidence linking perceived economic inequality with two forms of independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal: Difference from Others and Self- Reliance. In Study 3 (N = 12,634) societal differences in objective economic inequality across 48 nations predicted feelings of Difference from Others, but not Self-Reliance. Importantly, we found no significant associations of economic inequality with the other six dimensions of self-construal. Our findings help extend previous results linking economic inequality to forms of “social distance.”

We explore to what extent previously observed pan-cultural association between dimensions of self-construal and personal life satisfaction (PLS) may be moderated by three national-contextual variables: national wealth, economic inequality, and religious heritage. The results showed that MSelf-reliance (vs. dependence on others) predicted PLSpositively in poorer countries but negatively in richer countries. Connectedness to others (vs. self-containment) predicted PLS more strongly in Protestant-heritage countries. Self-expression (vs. harmony) predicted PLS more weakly (and non-significantly) in Muslim-heritage countries. In contrast, previously reported associations of self-direction (vs. reception-to-influence), consistency (vs. variability), and decontextualized (vs. contextualized) self-understanding with personal life satisfaction were not significantly moderated by these aspects of societal context. These results show the importance of considering the impact of national religious and economic context.

How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of well-being varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being.

The aim of this study is to address integrational processes experienced by some African immigrants with refugee backgrounds and five to ten years of residence in Norway. We collected data through s...

Purpose: Despite increased focus on parenting support internationally, there is a lack of agreement in what constitutes parenting support. This paper explores the experiences of parenting support activities from the perspective of stakeholders in Norwegian basic schools. Methods: Five focus group interviews were conducted with representatives from the schools’ parent work committee, class teachers, health nurses, and social workers from nine schools. The data were interpreted using an inductive thematic analysis. Results: Three main themes emerged from the data: (1) A community for the best of the child, (2) uniting through relations, and (3) sharing knowledge and language. Parenting support was experienced as universal, relational, and multidimensional. It was related to everyday life interactions between the home, school, and the parenting community with the best interest of the child as a goal. Conclusion: To avoid reducing parents to passive recipients of expert advice, parenting support activities should be an integral part of everyday school-home-parenting community collaborations. Abbreviation: EU-The European Union; UN-The Unition Nations; CoE-The Council of Europe; NSD-The Norwegian Centre for Research Data; CTP-Class teachers in primary school; CTJS-Class teachers in junior secondary school; P-Parents; H-Health nurses; SW-Social workers

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch), Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants across fifty countries, we compare associations of four types of happiness (out of which three are more collectivism-themed than personal life satisfaction) with two different measures of individualism. We replicated previous findings by demonstrating that societal happiness measured as country-level aggregate of personal life satisfaction is correlated with individualism. Importantly though, we also found that the country-level aggregates of the collectivism-themed measures of happiness do not tend to be significantly correlated with individualism. Implications for happiness studies and for policy makers are signaled.

IntroductionAccess to healthcare services for legal immigrants in Scandinavia is part of the policy agenda of the various governments as they strive to provide equal healthcare services to its citizens. Legal immigrants have the same rights as natives; however, studies have shown that there are inequalities in access to healthcare services between legal immigrants and natives. The extent of access depends on several factors, including organisational, social, financial and cultural factors. The lack of these factors acts as a barrier to access of healthcare services. The aim of this review is to map and report the evidence available on the barriers to access of healthcare services by legal immigrants in Scandinavia.Methods and analysisWe will adopt the six-stage framework developed by Arksey and O’Malley: (1) identifying the research question(s); (2) searching for relevant studies; (3) selecting studies; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarising and reporting the results; (6) conducting consultation exercises refined by Levacet aland the Joanna Briggs Institute. The search strategy for this scoping review will involve electronic databases including Ovid Medline, PsycINFO, Ovid EMBASE, PubMed and Google Scholar, in addition to grey literature from websites of relevant organisations. Data will be extracted and charted by two independent reviewers. A narrative summary of the findings will be presented.Ethics and disseminationThis is a review of the literature and all data will be obtained from publicly available materials; therefore, ethics approval is not required. The findings from this study will be disseminated as publications in peer-reviewed journals, at relevant national and international conferences, and as presentations to the health authorities in several municipalities in the Trøndelag region of Norway.

Purpose – To examine children and youth's participation in civic society in Norway with a particular focus on immigrant children's participation in May 17 (Constitution Day).Methodology – We observed May 17 activities in Trondheim, Norway, over several years and conducted in-depth interviews with immigrant children about their participation in May 17 activities. We also relied on archival data and statistical reports of youth participation and immigration policy as well as attitudes toward immigrants to provide context for the observations and interviews.Findings – We found three clear patterns in the data. First, the children continually expressed their enjoyment of traditional intergenerational activities and in the discussion we see how certain activities helped to integrate themselves and their families into their communities. Second, the children displayed a keen knowledge of the 17th of May traditions, their history, and their symbolic value in Norwegian society. Third, especially the older children and youth often discussed their feelings of being Norwegian while also expressing an awareness of their immigrant status and cultural heritage. Their reflections on these dual identities provide more general insights into immigrant status, assimilation, and multiculturalism in Norway.

The article examines how the role of being a parent contributed to experiences of inclusion and exclusion by the adults of eight families with African backgrounds in Norway. We present reflections on ethnicity and citizenship, and on Norwegian parenting values and practices as a background to descriptions on how the African adults experienced encounters with Norwegian adults such as neighbours, other parents, and professionals. The role of being a parent opened a range of opportunities for social interaction and learning. The interactional episodes described by the adults did, however, seem to be constrained by universalistic understandings of ‘good parenting’ and a focus on children’s rights and parental responsibilities consistent with Norwegian practices. This contributed to a sense of being different and morally suspicious. In this situation, the African adults found themselves without an equal position from where to voice alternative parenting values and with their parental authority weakened.

The relationship between mother's nutritional knowledge, maternal education, and child nutritional status (weight-for-age) was the subject of investigation in this study. The data were collected in Ghana on 55 well nourished and 55 malnourished mother-child pairs. A questionnaire designed to collect data on mother's knowledge and practices related to child care and nutrition was administered to the mothers. Data on mother's demographic and socio-economic characteristics as well as child anthropometric data were also collected. A nutrition knowledge score was calculated based on mother's responses to the nutrition related items. Bivariate analysis gave significant associations between child nutritional status and the following variables: time of initiating of breastfeeding, mother's knowledge of importance of colostrum and whether colostrum was given to child, age of introduction of supplementary food, and mother's knowledge about causes of kwashiorkor. The two groups also showed significant differences in their nutrition knowledge scores. Maternal formal education, and marital status were also found to be associated with child nutritional status in bivariate analyses. Further analysis with logistic regression revealed that maternal nutrition knowledge was independently associated with nutritional status after the effects of other significant variables were controlled for. Maternal education on the other hand was not found to be independently associated with nutritional status. These results imply that mother's practical knowledge about nutrition may be more important than formal maternal education for child nutrition outcome.

The consequences of mild-to-moderate malnutrition during early childhood for social and emotional status at ages eight to 16 were investigated in this study. Fifty-four Ghanaian children who were malnourished during the first three years of life were compared with 54 of their classmates who were not malnourished. Mean age for both groups was 12 years (malnourished SD = 2.2; comparison SD = 2.3). Their social and emotional status was assessed with Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist and Teacher's Report Form. Data on the children's socioeconomic background were also collected. The previously malnourished children were found to be more anxious, sad, depressed and withdrawn than the children who were not malnourished. They were also perceived to have poorer social relationships with others and more attention and thought problems than the comparison children. Aggressive and delinquent behaviour were not found to be related to the nutritional status of the children. No significant associations were found between the socioeconomic variables studied and the social and emotional behaviour of the children. These results show that mild-to-moderate malnutrition during early childhood has negative consequences for the children's emotional and social behaviour and that these consequences are still present several years after the episode of malnutrition. Keywords: Achenbach CBCL, child, nutrition Journal of Psychology in Africa 2004, 14(2): 87–94

Nutrition education has been used as a weapon against childhood malnutrition in Ghana, however, there is little evidence concerning its impact on maternal nutritional knowledge and child nutritional status. The purpose of this study was to find out whether changes have occurred in maternal nutritional knowledge during an eight year period and whether any changes observed will be related to the prevalence of child malnutrition. Data for the study were collected in the same study areas in 1993 and 2001 on maternal attitudes, beliefs and knowledge related to child nutritional status. Variables analyzed in this study were the ones that have been included in nutrition messages given to the mothers at the health centers where the data were collected. Data were also collected on the prevalence of childhood malnutrition. Results revealed significant changes in maternal nutritional knowledge from 1993 to 2001. Mothers interviewed in 2001 had better nutritional knowledge than mothers in 1993. The data on malnutrition prevalence showed an increase in the prevalence rate from 1993 to 1998. This suggests that the nutritional knowledge acquired by the mothers have not been translated in to behavior. Similar findings have been reported in the literature and there has been the suggestion that for nutrition knowledge to be put into practice, several conditions must be present. For example, (1) there is the need for both declarative and procedural knowledge, (2) there must be motivation to act, (3) new knowledge should fit into the schema of the individual and (4) resources needed to implement new information ought to be available. It was concluded that in order for nutrition education to have the desired impact, there is the need to incorporate these factors in the design and implementation of such programs. Key Words: nutrition education, attitude change IFE Psychologia Vol.12(2) 2004: 213-228

Effects of childhood malnutrition on cognitive performance of children in rural Ghana were investigated. Fifty-six 8–16 year olds with histories of mild-to-moderate malnutrition in the first three years of life and 56 matched comparisons were assessed on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children — Revised, and Raven's Progressive Matrices. In addition, the children were evaluated by their class teachers on six academic subjects. Socio-economic data on the children's backgrounds were also collected through questionnaires administered to their mothers. Results showed that the malnourished children performed poorer on all the measures than the comparison group. Age at onset and duration of malnutrition were not found to have any effect on the degree of impairment in cognitive performance. Analysis of the socio-economic variables did not reveal any significant difference between the background characteristics of the two groups of children. It was concluded that even mild-to-moderate malnutrition in early childhood has negative effects on cognitive performance. Journal of Psychology in Africa 2004, 14(1): 1–7

The relationship between mothers' belieft about causes of kwashiorkor and their children's nutritional status were examined among mothers of children aged 13 - 45 months and categorised as well nourished (n-49) and those suffering from kwashiorkor (n-46) in the Volta Region of Ghana. Using a semi-structured questionnaire the women were interviewed on their knowledge of the symptoms of kwashiorkor and what they believed causes kwashiorkor. The results strongly suggest that there is a relationship between mothers' beliefs about causes of kwashiorkor and the nutritional status of their children.