Research Degree Student Seminar

 
Youth participation is a complex, multifaceted social phenomenon with transformative ideas involving young people in various collective decision-making processes for cultural and institutional change. Theoretically, young people are valuable and capable social actors, who can share their knowledge and expertise in participatory spaces. However, an overview of the literature highlights exclusionary and tokenistic practices of youth participation with unequal power relations. This includes negative attitudes and beliefs towards young people’s capabilities. Despite this, participation is still seen as both a practical tool and a wider transformative process. Young people can even be utilised as resources and co-producers with professionals to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services and governing relations. Within public services, horizontal, trusting relationships between professionals and young people are viewed as integral for progressive social outcomes. In 2017, the Hong Kong government announced their commitment to youth participation, but there is ambivalence about how far this extends to local contexts. The limited understanding of what youth participation means, and what forms and practices are pursued in these local cultural contexts gave rise to this current qualitative study. Rather than a narrow focus towards young people, a multidimensional focus across three local youth services in Hong Kong explored what institutional practices of youth participation were pursued by seeking perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs from youth professionals, alongside observations of organisational cultures and values towards young people. Preliminary findings reveal that multiple forms of youth participation in these youth services co-exist with hidden agendas and unintended consequences. Relationships between professionals and young people proved to be an important objective. Yet, tensions between individual attitudes and wider institutional cultures are highlighted, alongside the disempowerment of social workers themselves. This begins to provide more in-depth understandings of both the opportunities and challenges for transformative youth participation in Hong Kong youth services.

 
Internal migration between Hong Kong and the mainland has drawn people’s attention over the last few years. People tend to migrate (including internal migration) at an early age to attain longer period for earning. This study aims to relate academic performance and social integration in university students coming from Hong Kong to mainland China. Numerous studies have suggested that the ambiguous effects of social integration, theoretical linkages of academic performance, social integration, and ethical sensitivity have been underexplored, particularly among Hong Kong young adults who are attending universities in mainland China, which contain internal migrants and Chinese culture. Resource use theory was derived from the Art of War to explain Hong Kong students’ social integration after crossing the border to mainland China. What’s more, a mixed methodology, combining the quantitative research method and qualitative research method will be applied to test the theoretical framework through empirical research.

 
This thesis examines the rise of local identity in Hong Kong, where an increasing number of people have identified themselves as “Hongkonger” rather than “Chinese” since the late 2000s, and, by association, it also examines the nature of the Hong Kong-China conflict. Emphasis is also placed on the community level related to everyday life, where young residents from three districts in Hong Kong with reportedly persistent tourist/parallel trading problems and high-profile localist protests were studied in depth. The study aims to explore the shift in identity politics through studies of spatiality, employing tools such as Google map street view analysis (an innovative method called Google Mapping) and in-depth interviews of young residents, aged between 18–34 in Sheung Shui, Tuen Mun and Yuen Long that had reported having suffered from an influx of tourists from the mainland and parallel traders, triggering localist movements. The study reveals and argues that the more the local space is shaped by tourism and parallel trading, the more likely that discontent towards mainlanders and nostalgia for the original lifestyle were bred among the residents. Finally, this study suggests that an ‘estranged space’ has been produced at the community level, which has fuelled a nascent form of localism in wider society as Hongkongers yearn to preserve their local culture and characteristics and to defend their political autonomy from the central Chinese government’s influences. Implications of estranged space and its association to the more recent anti-extradition bill amendment movement are also discussed.

 
Facial sexual dimorphism of homo sapiens evolved as a result of sexual selection, such that the masculine face of a male tends to be preferred by females, particularly under unpredictable and harsh environments. Built upon the biological evolutionary (Life History Strategy) and social psychological (Circular Model of Human Values) models, three studies (cross-national, cross-sectional, and experimental) are conducted to test the hypotheses that facial preference is one of the life history strategies that females adopt to cope with different morbidity-mortality related conditions and that the process is mediated by personal values. In this presentation, I will report the results of Study One, which was based on country-level samples. It was found that values and women’s facial preferences were predicted by morbidity-mortality-related extrinsic cues across different countries. Importantly, personal values were strong predictors of women’s facial masculinity preference, which was found to be one of the fast life history strategies. These findings suggest that personal values could contribute to the understanding of previously found condition-dependent effects on masculinity preferences of women. These results and interpretations are to be further tested in Study Two, using correlational data at the individual level, and Study Three, with an experimental design.

 
Idealised masculinity in the Japanese context traditionally rests on three principles: heteronormativity, regular employment, and primary economic responsibility within the home. Relevant to Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity (1995), this ‘salaryman’ design has been critiqued as legitimating gender asymmetries and encouraging a marginalisation of both femininities and likewise non-normative masculinities such as part-time and working-class groups. In recent years, various socio-economic developments/neoliberal trajectories have led to a splintering of each logic; there has been a rise in the non-regular structuring of labour and broadening of available role expectations for Japanese women across both public and private spheres. The impact of these changes on the lives of white-collar, university-educated young men—classically normative performativities— is largely unexplored. Two empirical realities remain unclear. First is how young men have negotiated this transitional period. No longer tied to the singular role expectations of the past, how do men make sense of their masculinity, and how might respective displacement, or notions of precarity, be articulated relative to these socioeconomic narratives. Second is the transformation of the salaryman ideal itself (as hegemonic) tied to these forms of discourse often seen as disruptive to its legitimation. To what extent does the salaryman constitute a hegemonic equivalent in the domestic context? What are the primary mechanisms through which it is constructed and defined amidst stated changes across the white-collar structuring of labour, and how does this process intersect with traditional hegemonic principles? Adopting a qualitative research design, a number of ethnographic interviews have been conducted with white-collar, non-managerial workers situated in both the Osaka and Tokyo regions, aged between 26–34. The two primary variables were regular/non-regular employment and single/married status. Preliminary findings hint at a nuanced, if growing, divide between demographics relative to the support of respective hegemonic logics—traditional and contemporary forms—and likewise a sense of individual displacement as a result.

 
Despite the rate of aggressive behaviour in school being the highest in Hong Kong among 72 countries and regions, there has been no evidence-based study targeting children aged 6–10 with reactive and proactive aggression in Hong Kong, even though this is a crucial period to conduct the anti-aggression intervention. Since the reactive and proactive aggression are closely associated with different deficits in processing social information based on the social information processing model, the present study employed storytelling intervention, which is designed based on the SIP model, to reduce children’s social information processing deficits. Schoolchildren with reactive and proactive aggression were randomly divided into an intervention group, a placebo group, and a standard control group, which completed pretest, post-test, and 6-month follow-up tests with quantitative and qualitative measurements. Results showed significant improvement in the ability to control anger among reactive-aggressive children in the intervention group after 6 months. The qualitative result revealed improved performance in processing social information among children with reactive aggression and proactive aggression in the intervention group. Since aggression is a significant predictor of severe antisocial behaviour in later life, the opportunity to receive treatment at an early stage is essential for the development of children’s mental health. The storytelling intervention takes into account the developmental stage of young children, which makes it possible for young children with reactive and proactive aggression to receive effective intervention. The present study proved that this intervention could effectively reduce young children’s deficits in processing social information, thus providing practical insights for social workers in developing and administering an effective anti-aggression programme.

 
In the threat compensation literature and control-related studies, it is posited that when people face uncertainty and threats, they strive to replenish a sense of control and order by different control strategies. Compensatory control strategies, via the bolstering of agency of the self or powerful others or strengthening the outcome expectancy or non-context-specific structure, are commonly observed responses to being under threat in the literature, especially when primary control is not an option. Emotions come after exposure to threat, commonly anxiety and anger, and motivate the replenishment of a sense of control and order. The interplay between emotions and compensatory control is, however, yet to be explored. Given the difference in action tendency and influence of cognitive appraisal between anger and anxiety, I would like to examine whether these emotions may shape different compensatory control tendencies in this series of studies. The first two studies aim to examine whether emotion manipulation in anxiety and anger would bring about different preferences in compensatory control, with Study 1 using the same event across two conditions and Study 2 using two different events in the same context with a control group introduced. Study 3 will provide support for the emotion-compensatory control relationship with an eye-tracking method. The tentative results of Study 1 suggest that using the same event in inducing both anxiety and anger may be at risk of contamination. Anxiety and perceived avoidability of an event predicted a preference for context-specific structure. It may imply a possible relationship between perceived self-agency and the seeking of a context-specific structure; a clearer pattern will be explored in subsequent studies. Taking into consideration the observations of Study 1, better differentiation in emotion induction will be determined.

 
Immigrants from mainland China to Hong Kong were documented as being vulnerable to developing mental health problems and social dysfunctions. However, recent immigrant studies reported the positive experience of psychological growth. The implicit theories indicate that fluid mindset would contribute to the development of psychological growth. Regarding immigrant mother-child dyads, it would be interesting to investigate whether fluid mindset has a dyadic effect on psychological growth, as the family systems theory brings about reciprocal influences between an individual and his/her family member. A further research question is whether resilience, as a protective resource in coping with stress, would mediate the dyadic effect of fluid mindset on psychological growth in the dyad. By targeting immigrant mother-child dyads, we tested the hypotheses that 1) fluid mindset will have significant actor and partner effects on psychological growth within the dyad, and 2) resilience will mediate the actor and partner effects of fluid mindset on psychological growth. A total of 220 immigrant mother-child dyads completed measures on fluid mindset, resilience, and psychological growth. We used the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006) and the actor-partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) to test hypotheses. The APIM results showed that the mother’s fluid mindset had significant actor and partner effects on her own and her child’s psychological growth, whereas the child’s fluid mindset only showed a significant actor effect on his/her own psychological growth. In addition to the APIMeM result that one’s resilience mediated the actor effect of fluid mindset on his/her own psychological growth, child resilience mediated the partner effect of the mother’s fluid mindset on her child’s psychological growth. Our findings provide new evidence for the dyadic effects of fluid mindset on the development of psychological growth within Chinese immigrant mother-child pairs and highlight the mediating role of resilience in transmitting the dyadic effect at the interpersonal level. Our findings have strong implications for enhancing psychological growth among immigrants via improving their fluid mindset and strengthening their resilience capacity by conducting parallel or combined intervention programmes to include both mothers and children.

 
Executive functions (EF) are a set of cognitive processes (e.g. working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility) that are involved in goal-directed behaviour and adaptive responses to novel, complex, or ambiguous situations. These cognitive processes are often linked to the prefrontal cortex of the brain and can be profoundly affected by various adversities (e.g. poverty, abuse), especially during early childhood. Regarding the effects of childhood adversities on EF, the deficit model states that disadvantaged children are at risk of experiencing a disruption of neurobiological systems, which leads to EF suppression. In contrast, by highlighting strengths and abilities involved in responding to adversities, an alternative adaptation-based approach to resilience indicates that stressed individuals are specialised and sensitised to demonstrate specific enhancements in cognitive abilities following repeated exposure to childhood adversities. In previous studies on childhood adversities, low family socioeconomic status (SES) has been widely documented as a prominent disadvantage. I conducted a pilot study to examine the effect of SES on EF. The preliminary results indicate that low SES suppressed composite EF skills and working memory rather than inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. My preliminary findings provide evidence for the deficit model but do not support the adaptation-based approach to resilience. My future research will build on the deficit model and the adaptation-based approach to resilience to elucidate potential detriments and benefits of childhood adversities on EF and to further develop tailor-made interventions for children who face various adversities.

 
Assessment of street child interventions in the context of Zambia as a developing nation places emphasis on the use of local social capital in the form of family (human, financial, and social) and community social capital as protective factors against street child-connected lifestyles. The study’s main claim was that weaker family (bonding social capital) and community social capital (bridging social capital) acted as pathways to children developing a street-connected lifestyle. The study has four main objectives; these are firstly to analyse the needs and living conditions of street children of in Lusaka city; secondly, to analyse existing street child interventions in Lusaka city; thirdly, to examine government policy addressing the existing street child situation; and lastly, to develop an integrated social capital framework for street child interventions that adopts a child-sensitive rights-based approach. The study applied a simultaneous mixed-method approach in which a QUAL + QUAN stance was adopted. Primary data collection was done in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. Quantitative data collection involved conducting a cross-sectional descriptive survey of 349 street children’s needs and living conditions. Qualitative data collection involved semi-structured interviews with 40 street children, 4 government officials from relevant departments (social welfare, child development, child protection, and medical social work), 8 intervening street child agencies, 1 representative of the social worker’s association of Zambia, and 4 former social work students who had interned at a street child intervening agency. Preliminary findings on objective one show that large numbers of respondents slept on the street. There was a great degree of influence of friends in respondent’s street-connected lifestyles which created a form of social bonding amongst the respondents that was both positive and negative to their daily existence on the streets. Higher numbers of respondents stated that they sought more informal support from friends and street groups (gangs) than from parents or relatives, pointing to weak connections with their families. A greater percentage of “children of the street” were likely to be part a street group (gang) than “children on the street”. Greater proportions of female respondents were likely to be members of a street gang than male respondents. The main functions of a street group (gang) were found to be friendship and protection. The majority of respondents came from households within which the guardians’ employment status was “unemployed”.

 
The literature on gender and crime begins with a critique of the history of criminology that is portrayed as a history of male researchers studying male offenders, victims, prisoners, and professionals in the criminal justice system. Whereas many studies have been conducted to fill this gap in numerous countries outside Africa and in a few African countries, such studies are yet to be conducted in Uganda. The present study extends research on female prisoners to Uganda with a sample of female prisoners convicted of murder (N = 30) from one female prison in Uganda. Guided by the vast literature that has explored the experience of victimisation among female murderers, this study was located in the social structure of Uganda in order to investigate the different forms of victimisation that female murderers experienced. The forms of victimisation investigated in this study were: childhood victimisation (physical, sexual, and witnessing violence) and intimate partner violence victimisation (IPV) (physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence and controlling behaviour). The study was conducted in a retrospective manner in which women reconstructed their history of victimisation. Theoretically, the study is guided by a socialist feminist perspective and a sociological imagination. Methodologically, it is a qualitative study placed within the qualitative tradition of phenomenology and feminist standpoint epistemology. The study attempts to answer the following questions: what forms of victimisation did women murderers experience? How do women describe their experience of victimisation? What circumstances surrounded women’s victimisation experience? What factors explain women’s inability to escape victimisation? Preliminary findings show that all women had experienced victimisation at one point in their lifetime beginning during childhood (N = 23) and in intimate relations (N = 27). Women described the experience with different forms of victimisation as recurring and enduring. Women’s inability to escape victimisation before killing was linked to interpersonal, sociocultural, economic, and institutional factors in the social structure of Uganda.

 
Despite recognition of the link between childhood abuse and adolescent depression, the underlying mechanisms behind the association remain understudied. This study aims to examine three mediational pathways from childhood abuse and trauma to depressive symptoms through peer alienation and hopelessness. Four wellness factors (body esteem, life meaning, social problem-solving, and equanimity) in the mediating effects were explored. In this cross-sectional study, 786 participants completed measures of childhood abuse and trauma, peer alienation, hopelessness, depressive moods, body esteem, life meaning, social problem solving, and equanimity. The result shows that the association between childhood abuse and trauma was significantly mediated by peer alienation and hopelessness. The higher the level of childhood abuse and trauma, the greater chance of occurrence of peer alienation and hopelessness will be, each of which leads to more depressive symptoms on its own. The result further shows that the combination of a high level of childhood abuse and peer alienation leads to a greater degree of hopelessness, which in turn results in more depressive symptoms. In addition, the result also shows the moderating role played by social problem-solving and equanimity in the indirect relationship between childhood abuse and trauma and depressive symptoms through hopelessness. Furthermore, the moderated serial mediation result also shows that social problem-solving and equanimity are significantly moderated between hopelessness and social problem-solving (hopelessness x social problem-solving: -.13, p < 0.05), as well as equanimity (hopelessness x equanimity: -.07, p < 0.01) respectively. The findings suggest that the indirect effect of childhood abuse and trauma on depressive symptoms through hopelessness differed by social problem-solving and equanimity such that the sequentially mediated relation between childhood abuse and trauma and depressive symptoms will be weaker for those who are stronger in social problem-solving and equanimity. Having said that, the study also provides insight into interventions to prevent or manage depressive symptoms. Instead of targeting childhood abuse and trauma alone, earlier stages of intervention targeting peer alienation and hopelessness, the two psychosocial factors which were found to be crucial in the occurrence of depressive symptoms, could be implemented in the Chinese context so as to yield a better result. The study also shows that social problem-solving and equanimity are two important protective factors for adolescents’ development of depressive symptoms after being subjected to childhood abuse and trauma.

 
Restorative practices were first piloted in Singapore schools in 2005 with the hope of developing restorative schools using a whole school approach. The success of creating restorative schools seems like a far-fetched idea in view of the slow growth in adopting it as a good practice. Starting as a behaviour management tool in schools, renewed efforts by schools in adopting restorative practices give hope in recent times to building restorative schools. This presentation seeks to explain possible reasons for the lack of traction in adopting restorative practices and philosophy through secondary research and anecdotal evidence.

 
Schizophrenia has been the label for a major mental disorder for more than a hundred years. Despite a century of efforts, the underlying pathology of schizophrenia remains uncertain. However, since the unanticipated discovery of the first antipsychotic in the 1950s, the medical world has been fascinated by its fortuitous calming effect. Various kinds of antipsychotics in the form of tablets and long-acting injections have been devised to assure adherence to antipsychotic treatment for people with schizophrenia in order to prevent relapse. Although the available evidence has cautioned that discontinuation of antipsychotics could increase the chance of relapse, the truth is that antipsychotics cannot guarantee a person will be free from relapse, and the people found the induced side effects unbearable and disturbing. In addition, a substantial number of people with schizophrenia who take antipsychotics show little response to antipsychotics, even though the newer generation of antipsychotics have come to the market in an attempt to improve drug efficacy and alleviate the long-term side-effect burden. Traditionally, medical discourse about schizophrenia has been largely external. The voices of people with schizophrenia are often ignored, and their voices regarding taking antipsychotic are even scarcer. People in relapse are often labelled as ‘drug non-compliant’. The fear of relapse has also made clinicians uncertain about stopping antipsychotics. That makes the use of antipsychotics endless. The motivation for this study stems from an intention to understand the indissoluble connection between people with schizophrenia and antipsychotics. The ultimate purpose is to obtain an accurate understanding and description of the experiences of people with schizophrenia when using antipsychotics, without any presuppositions or bias such as drug compliance. By using systematic and appropriate scientific enquiry, the lifeworld of people taking antipsychotics can reveal itself more fully, and the voice of people with schizophrenia regarding the use of antipsychotics can be heard. Such personal experiences will open a type of evidence beyond that which figures or numbers can tell. To benefit clinical practice, the findings of this study can facilitate prescribers and mental health professionals having empathetic dialogues with people with schizophrenia and eventually secure a more effective therapeutic alliance.

 
Sleep is one of the most fundamental needs for human survival; poor sleep quality may be related to negative health consequences, such as low energy and fatigue, difficulty concentrating, poor work performance, and mood disturbances (Ratcliff & Van Dongen, 2009). Music as an intervention has gradually become recognised globally in clinical populations (Van Westrhenen & Fritz, 2014) and has demonstrated its effects on improving sleep quality (Lai & Good, 2006). The mechanism behind this is, however, under investigation. Music is a set of sounds for which it is suspected sound characteristic may be associated with such therapeutic effects. One possible direction may be related to binaural beat (BB) changing brainwave patterns and the brain entrainment effects. Brainwave patterns during sleeping have been well investigated in the field of psychology, and their quality is associated with the brainwave pattern according to the amplitude or amount of specific alpha, theta and delta brainwaves between 1 and 9 Hz during sleep (Guilleminault & Kreutzer, 2003). It is hypothesised that stimulating the auditory brainwave pattern mimicking the healthy human sleep cycle could be used as an aid for falling asleep.

 
Mental health is an integral part of health, and depression has become a common and serious mental health issue. Depression is a leading cause of disability and is ranked by the WHO as the single largest contributor to global disability (WHO, 2017). Apart from the debilitating effect of the illness, depression may also lead to suicide; thus it demands serious attention. Religion and spirituality are topics of increasing interest. Mental health professionals have been showing concern regarding psychosocial and spiritual care for mental health recovery in the past decades (Fallot, 2001; Gomi, Starnino, & Canda, 2014). Despite there being a number of studies on spirituality/religiosity and mental health or depression, the empirical evidence seems to be inconsistent. The study aims to examine the effectiveness of spiritual intervention on recovery in persons with depression. A mixed research method will be adopted for the triangulation of data. Through the study, a theoretical framework of spirituality and depression will be developed. Thus, it will provide a better understanding on service users’ spiritual needs and information for health professionals to plan and design appropriate intervention for clients.

 
Following the world conference on Education for All in Thailand, 1990, promoting inclusive education has been on the agenda of many intergovernmental organisations. In 2015, the United Nations made inclusive education one of its main targets under the Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty and inequality and to ensure peace and social justice. Ghana, located in Sub-Sharan Africa, also implemented an inclusive education programme to provide access and quality education for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, such as those with disabilities (CwDs). However, along with the non-involvement of social workers, barriers pertaining to teachers’ expertise, negative attitudes, and socio-cultural practices and beliefs toward disability, as well as the absence of the necessary benchmarks to determine inclusive development in schools are evident. Consequently, the overarching goal of this dissertation is to examine the development of inclusive cultures, policies, and practices, and the potential collaboration between education and social work in addressing the setbacks. To achieve this goal, first the study proposes a multifaceted synergistic model and adopts a human rights approach as a framework to guide the dissertation. Using the critical realist paradigm, concurrent mixed methods, cross-sectional survey, case study and multistage sampling technique, the study collected data from different participants. Thematic analysis was used to systematically identify, organise, and interpret patterns of meanings (themes) from the different interview transcripts. The results show that, CwDs feel welcomed in mainstream schools, the overall acceptance of the inclusive education programme and the desire of the study participants to have social work introduced into the schools was overwhelming. The findings of the study show a positive relation and strong support between social work and inclusive education.

 
Although there has been evidence to suggest a negative relationship between aggression and social competence, little attention has been given to interventions aimed at promoting aggressive children’s social competence. Further, the relationships between reactive and proactive aggression and social competence among young children are still unclear. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the relationships between the subtypes of aggression and social competence and aims to improve social competence among young children with reactive and proactive aggression through storytelling intervention based on a SIP model. Approximately 300 students were selected as participants from 3278 students based on their total score on the Reactive-Proactive Questionnaire (RPQ). Participants with a total RPQ score one standard deviation above the mean were selected and will be randomly assigned to three groups: storytelling group, placebo group, and no-contact group. Participants in the storytelling group will receive a series of sessions to promote social competence. A series of questionnaires, including the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2 Chinese), the Child Behaviour Checklist-Youth Self-Report (CBCL-YSR) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, will be used to assess children’s social competence. The data will be collected at pretest (before the intervention), post-test (at the end of the intervention) and follow-up test (6 months after the intervention) from both students and parents to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention.

 
From a life-course perspective, the chain of risk model posits that sequential exposures over the life course can increase the risk of certain diseases. (Kuh et al., 2003). Although later life health condition and well-being have already received increased attention in recent studies, most studies focus on the effects of early life malnutrition or immigration on long-term health consequences and ignore how poor health status influences migrants’ performance in the labour market even though economists have also increasingly recognised the vital role of health status as a dimension of human capital in economic development. Although Hong Kong used to be British colony, it still shares a culture and lifestyle similar to mainland China. Therefore, Hong Kong provides a good control group to study the impact of migration from mainland China. Based on panel data from Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics (HKPSSD), a multiple linear regression model will be used. This research aims to explore how timing of the mobility influences the long-term health of migrants from mainland China to Hong Kong and the effect of migrants’ performance in the labour market, compared with local HK natives. Additionally, this research intends to explore how health capital plays a role between migration and labour market.

 
Given that Shanghai has the largest migrant population and is the most economically developed city in China, numerous studies have focused on floating population management and issues related to immigrants’ social and economic inclusion in domestic areas; in contrast, discussion concerning attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (ATII) is relatively limited. Two main theories, namely political economy threatened theory and sociotropic concerns theory, in explaining ATII have been widely interpreted in a Western context; however, the results have still been inconsistent in different empirical studies. China has a large immigrant population, but migrants’ welfare is restricted not only by social structure boundaries (such as the hukou system), but it is also faced with a sociotropic boundary. Public attitudes toward immigrants can largely explain the status quo of migrants’ inclusion, and thus they provide a unique perspective in studying migrants’ inclusion in society. Based on the panel data of Shanghai Urban Neighbourhood Survey (SUNS, 2016), through regression-based and conjoint analysis, this study will determine how natives’ and immigrants’ attitudes would be influenced by economic and sociotropic factors, and to what extent these two theories can be explained in a Chinese context. This study will make contribution to the study of bilateral attitudes of both natives and immigrants, and thus to better understanding the social inclusion of migrants in China.

 
With a substantial increase in the elderly population and life expectancy, there is a growing interest in promoting successful ageing in the society. A large body of scientific research has emerged to differentiate “successful ageing” from normal ageing. However, past quantitative studies often utilise different operational definitions of successful ageing in their investigations, resulting in inconsistent patterns being shown in the ageing literature. The lack of agreement on its definition limits our capacity to obtain a clear picture of successful ageing in late adulthood. Moreover, the criteria of successful ageing adopted by researchers often fail to incorporate the perspective of older adults. Using Rowe and Kahn’s (1987) conceptualisation, most researchers emphasise physical functioning and/or avoidance of disability as the primary domain of successful ageing. It neglects, however, the fact that physical decline is a normal ageing process, and older adults also have their own conceptualisation of successful ageing. For example, older people focus more on positive outlook and psychological adaptation to age-related changes rather than the absence of chronic disabilities and diseases. To improve the current conceptualisation and measurement of successful ageing, the present study aims to develop a multidimensional scale of successful ageing to reflect on the perspectives of both researchers and older people.

 
Cross-boundary children and their parents suffer from various stressors and mental health problems. This pilot study aimed to investigate whether an emotion regulation parallel intervention for children and parents effectively enhanced resilience and mental health. A total of 38 pairs of cross-boundary children and parents participated in concurrent but separate intervention sessions. Three waves of tests (i.e., pre-, post-, and 1-month follow-up tests) were conducted using t-tests to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The children and parents reported significant improvements in positive affect, resilience, and family harmony, and a reduction in depressive symptoms following the emotion regulation intervention. For both children and parents, the participants with higher depression levels generally showed greater improvement. The preliminary results indicated that the parent-children parallel group method is an effective therapy for addressing the needs of cross-boundary families. Future researchers who seek to implement demand-driven and practice-based interventions in community settings should take contextual and cultural sensitivity into consideration and involve community stakeholders (e.g. cross-boundary family members and social workers) in all aspects of the research process with a community-based participatory research approach. Screening based on depression may maximise the benefits to the participants. This study contributes empirical evidence to the literature on cross-boundary families and has important implications for the improvement of social services. Randomised controlled trials are advocated in future studies to generate more evidence.

 
This current research aims to investigate whether emotion regulation can be determined by one’s desired emotional state (known as ideal affect). Cultural values, including openness to change, self-enhancement, and conservatism, could account for variations in ideal affect (Tsai, 2006) and emotion regulation (Matsumoto, 2006) between Americans and Chinese. Study 1 thus explores the serial mediation effects of cultural values and ideal affect in explaining cultural differences in the use of three emotion regulation strategies (avoidance thinking, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression). Study 2 aims to test the impact of ideal affect on emotion regulation strategies. Study 1 was conducted with 150 European American and 150 Hong Kong Chinese students by using an online survey. Results reveal that self-enhancement and ideal low-arousal positive states accounted for the cultural variations in cognitive reappraisal. Conservatism explained the individual variations in expressive suppression. Study 2 recruited 53 European American and 49 Hong Kong Chinese students. They were randomly assigned to a meeting or party condition. The meeting/party condition was designed to induce ideal low-/high- arousal positive states by asking them to prepare an invitation letter for a tranquil meeting/an exciting party. In the middle of writing, a construction noise was played to elicit a highly aroused negative emotional state. Participants’ emotion regulation strategies and their expressive behaviours were assessed. Results show that, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, the participants in the party condition used more cognitive reappraisal and showed more expressive behaviours than those in the meeting condition. These findings will help counsellors shape the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies for their clients by improving awareness of the role of ideal affect.

 
Men who have sex with men (MSM) and are newly diagnosed HIV positive suffer from dual stigma related to their HIV status and homosexual identity, which may in turn increase their psychological distress such as depressive and anxiety symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the predicting effect of dual stigma related to HIV status and homosexual identity on depressive and anxiety symptoms among newly diagnosed Chinese HIV-positive MSM and to examine whether a high level of resilience will work as a protective factor to alleviate the aforementioned predicting effect. A total of 112 newly diagnosed HIV-positive MSM participated in a two-wave survey with an interval of 6 months. Participants diagnosed as HIV positive within the previous three months were recruited with the collaboration of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Shenzhen, Guangdong. The average diagnosis period was 33 days (SD = 6). The negative self-image subscale of Berger’s 21 abridged HIV Stigma Scale, the adapted version for Homosexuality Stigma Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9), the Generalised Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD7), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) were used to assess stigma related to HIV status, stigma related to homosexual identity, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and resilience, respectively. The results using structural equation modelling (SEM) showed that dual stigma at baseline predicted significant increases in depressive and anxiety symptoms 6 months later. Baseline resilience moderated the predicting effect of the baseline dual stigma on distress at follow-up, after controlling for baseline distress and covariates. Specifically, as dual stigma increased, distress symptoms grew more rapidly for individuals with lower resilience than for individuals with higher resilience. Our findings highlight that dual stigma, as a prevalent risk factor, predicted distress among the newly diagnosed MSM, and resilience, as a protective factor, buffered the harmful effect of dual stigma on distress. The results present strong implications for developing resilience-based intervention programmes among this population with challenges in adjusting to the burdens of dual stigma and mental health problems.

 
Parenting is considered to be one of the most influential factors determining academic outcomes among adolescents. This is especially true in Asia where a collective culture predominates. That said, the study of parenting styles in Hong Kong (HK) remains an underresearched area possibly because HK, as a small city, has a high preponderance of high achievers. With the emergence of ‘helicopter parenting’, a term used to describe parents who micromanage their children’s lives in an age inappropriate mannerism, the composition of contemporary parenting styles may be manifested differently in the 21st century. Regardless of all the changes in our contemporary society, parenting styles have been examined with a configurational approach for decades and are understood along two bipolar dimensions: responsiveness and demandingness. Addressing the theoretical and methodological limitations of such an approach, this study examines the core dimensions of parenting with an orthogonal approach – parenting as a unidimensional construct. Conceptualising the autonomous motivational framework of the Self-Determination Theory as the theoretical framework of the current study, this research develops a theory-driven model to examine the bidirectional aspects in parent-adolescent relationships. An initial validation study (n = 391) is conducted to establish the validity and reliability of understanding the core dimensions and factor structure of contemporary parenting styles. The main study (n = 976) investigates the bidirectional relationships through examining adolescents’ motivational beliefs and basic psychological needs through path analysis. The current study addresses a significant research gap by shining a light on the true nature of parenting and investigating the mediating effects of the powerful psychological mechanism in function. Furthermore, it informs interventional studies for informed practice.

 
Youth participation is a complex, multifaceted social phenomenon with transformative ideas involving young people in various collective decision-making processes for cultural and institutional change. Theoretically, young people are valuable and capable social actors, who can share their knowledge and expertise in participatory spaces. However, an overview of the literature highlights exclusionary and tokenistic practices of youth participation with unequal power relations. This includes negative attitudes and beliefs towards young people’s capabilities. Despite this, participation is still seen as both a practical tool and a wider transformative process. Young people can even be utilised as resources and co-producers with professionals to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services and governing relations. Within public services, horizontal, trusting relationships between professionals and young people are viewed as integral for progressive social outcomes. In 2017, the Hong Kong government announced their commitment to youth participation, but there is ambivalence about how far this extends to local contexts. The limited understanding of what youth participation means, and what forms and practices are pursued in these local cultural contexts gave rise to this current qualitative study. Rather than a narrow focus towards young people, a multidimensional focus across three local youth services in Hong Kong explored what institutional practices of youth participation were pursued by seeking perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs from youth professionals, alongside observations of organisational cultures and values towards young people. Preliminary findings reveal that multiple forms of youth participation in these youth services co-exist with hidden agendas and unintended consequences. Relationships between professionals and young people proved to be an important objective. Yet, tensions between individual attitudes and wider institutional cultures are highlighted, alongside the disempowerment of social workers themselves. This begins to provide more in-depth understandings of both the opportunities and challenges for transformative youth participation in Hong Kong youth services.

 
Internal migration between Hong Kong and the mainland has drawn people’s attention over the last few years. People tend to migrate (including internal migration) at an early age to attain longer period for earning. This study aims to relate academic performance and social integration in university students coming from Hong Kong to mainland China. Numerous studies have suggested that the ambiguous effects of social integration, theoretical linkages of academic performance, social integration, and ethical sensitivity have been underexplored, particularly among Hong Kong young adults who are attending universities in mainland China, which contain internal migrants and Chinese culture. Resource use theory was derived from the Art of War to explain Hong Kong students’ social integration after crossing the border to mainland China. What’s more, a mixed methodology, combining the quantitative research method and qualitative research method will be applied to test the theoretical framework through empirical research.

 
This thesis examines the rise of local identity in Hong Kong, where an increasing number of people have identified themselves as “Hongkonger” rather than “Chinese” since the late 2000s, and, by association, it also examines the nature of the Hong Kong-China conflict. Emphasis is also placed on the community level related to everyday life, where young residents from three districts in Hong Kong with reportedly persistent tourist/parallel trading problems and high-profile localist protests were studied in depth. The study aims to explore the shift in identity politics through studies of spatiality, employing tools such as Google map street view analysis (an innovative method called Google Mapping) and in-depth interviews of young residents, aged between 18–34 in Sheung Shui, Tuen Mun and Yuen Long that had reported having suffered from an influx of tourists from the mainland and parallel traders, triggering localist movements. The study reveals and argues that the more the local space is shaped by tourism and parallel trading, the more likely that discontent towards mainlanders and nostalgia for the original lifestyle were bred among the residents. Finally, this study suggests that an ‘estranged space’ has been produced at the community level, which has fuelled a nascent form of localism in wider society as Hongkongers yearn to preserve their local culture and characteristics and to defend their political autonomy from the central Chinese government’s influences. Implications of estranged space and its association to the more recent anti-extradition bill amendment movement are also discussed.

 
Facial sexual dimorphism of homo sapiens evolved as a result of sexual selection, such that the masculine face of a male tends to be preferred by females, particularly under unpredictable and harsh environments. Built upon the biological evolutionary (Life History Strategy) and social psychological (Circular Model of Human Values) models, three studies (cross-national, cross-sectional, and experimental) are conducted to test the hypotheses that facial preference is one of the life history strategies that females adopt to cope with different morbidity-mortality related conditions and that the process is mediated by personal values. In this presentation, I will report the results of Study One, which was based on country-level samples. It was found that values and women’s facial preferences were predicted by morbidity-mortality-related extrinsic cues across different countries. Importantly, personal values were strong predictors of women’s facial masculinity preference, which was found to be one of the fast life history strategies. These findings suggest that personal values could contribute to the understanding of previously found condition-dependent effects on masculinity preferences of women. These results and interpretations are to be further tested in Study Two, using correlational data at the individual level, and Study Three, with an experimental design.

 
Idealised masculinity in the Japanese context traditionally rests on three principles: heteronormativity, regular employment, and primary economic responsibility within the home. Relevant to Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity (1995), this ‘salaryman’ design has been critiqued as legitimating gender asymmetries and encouraging a marginalisation of both femininities and likewise non-normative masculinities such as part-time and working-class groups. In recent years, various socio-economic developments/neoliberal trajectories have led to a splintering of each logic; there has been a rise in the non-regular structuring of labour and broadening of available role expectations for Japanese women across both public and private spheres. The impact of these changes on the lives of white-collar, university-educated young men—classically normative performativities— is largely unexplored. Two empirical realities remain unclear. First is how young men have negotiated this transitional period. No longer tied to the singular role expectations of the past, how do men make sense of their masculinity, and how might respective displacement, or notions of precarity, be articulated relative to these socioeconomic narratives. Second is the transformation of the salaryman ideal itself (as hegemonic) tied to these forms of discourse often seen as disruptive to its legitimation. To what extent does the salaryman constitute a hegemonic equivalent in the domestic context? What are the primary mechanisms through which it is constructed and defined amidst stated changes across the white-collar structuring of labour, and how does this process intersect with traditional hegemonic principles? Adopting a qualitative research design, a number of ethnographic interviews have been conducted with white-collar, non-managerial workers situated in both the Osaka and Tokyo regions, aged between 26–34. The two primary variables were regular/non-regular employment and single/married status. Preliminary findings hint at a nuanced, if growing, divide between demographics relative to the support of respective hegemonic logics—traditional and contemporary forms—and likewise a sense of individual displacement as a result.

 
Despite the rate of aggressive behaviour in school being the highest in Hong Kong among 72 countries and regions, there has been no evidence-based study targeting children aged 6–10 with reactive and proactive aggression in Hong Kong, even though this is a crucial period to conduct the anti-aggression intervention. Since the reactive and proactive aggression are closely associated with different deficits in processing social information based on the social information processing model, the present study employed storytelling intervention, which is designed based on the SIP model, to reduce children’s social information processing deficits. Schoolchildren with reactive and proactive aggression were randomly divided into an intervention group, a placebo group, and a standard control group, which completed pretest, post-test, and 6-month follow-up tests with quantitative and qualitative measurements. Results showed significant improvement in the ability to control anger among reactive-aggressive children in the intervention group after 6 months. The qualitative result revealed improved performance in processing social information among children with reactive aggression and proactive aggression in the intervention group. Since aggression is a significant predictor of severe antisocial behaviour in later life, the opportunity to receive treatment at an early stage is essential for the development of children’s mental health. The storytelling intervention takes into account the developmental stage of young children, which makes it possible for young children with reactive and proactive aggression to receive effective intervention. The present study proved that this intervention could effectively reduce young children’s deficits in processing social information, thus providing practical insights for social workers in developing and administering an effective anti-aggression programme.

 
In the threat compensation literature and control-related studies, it is posited that when people face uncertainty and threats, they strive to replenish a sense of control and order by different control strategies. Compensatory control strategies, via the bolstering of agency of the self or powerful others or strengthening the outcome expectancy or non-context-specific structure, are commonly observed responses to being under threat in the literature, especially when primary control is not an option. Emotions come after exposure to threat, commonly anxiety and anger, and motivate the replenishment of a sense of control and order. The interplay between emotions and compensatory control is, however, yet to be explored. Given the difference in action tendency and influence of cognitive appraisal between anger and anxiety, I would like to examine whether these emotions may shape different compensatory control tendencies in this series of studies. The first two studies aim to examine whether emotion manipulation in anxiety and anger would bring about different preferences in compensatory control, with Study 1 using the same event across two conditions and Study 2 using two different events in the same context with a control group introduced. Study 3 will provide support for the emotion-compensatory control relationship with an eye-tracking method. The tentative results of Study 1 suggest that using the same event in inducing both anxiety and anger may be at risk of contamination. Anxiety and perceived avoidability of an event predicted a preference for context-specific structure. It may imply a possible relationship between perceived self-agency and the seeking of a context-specific structure; a clearer pattern will be explored in subsequent studies. Taking into consideration the observations of Study 1, better differentiation in emotion induction will be determined.

 
Immigrants from mainland China to Hong Kong were documented as being vulnerable to developing mental health problems and social dysfunctions. However, recent immigrant studies reported the positive experience of psychological growth. The implicit theories indicate that fluid mindset would contribute to the development of psychological growth. Regarding immigrant mother-child dyads, it would be interesting to investigate whether fluid mindset has a dyadic effect on psychological growth, as the family systems theory brings about reciprocal influences between an individual and his/her family member. A further research question is whether resilience, as a protective resource in coping with stress, would mediate the dyadic effect of fluid mindset on psychological growth in the dyad. By targeting immigrant mother-child dyads, we tested the hypotheses that 1) fluid mindset will have significant actor and partner effects on psychological growth within the dyad, and 2) resilience will mediate the actor and partner effects of fluid mindset on psychological growth. A total of 220 immigrant mother-child dyads completed measures on fluid mindset, resilience, and psychological growth. We used the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006) and the actor-partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) to test hypotheses. The APIM results showed that the mother’s fluid mindset had significant actor and partner effects on her own and her child’s psychological growth, whereas the child’s fluid mindset only showed a significant actor effect on his/her own psychological growth. In addition to the APIMeM result that one’s resilience mediated the actor effect of fluid mindset on his/her own psychological growth, child resilience mediated the partner effect of the mother’s fluid mindset on her child’s psychological growth. Our findings provide new evidence for the dyadic effects of fluid mindset on the development of psychological growth within Chinese immigrant mother-child pairs and highlight the mediating role of resilience in transmitting the dyadic effect at the interpersonal level. Our findings have strong implications for enhancing psychological growth among immigrants via improving their fluid mindset and strengthening their resilience capacity by conducting parallel or combined intervention programmes to include both mothers and children.

 
Executive functions (EF) are a set of cognitive processes (e.g. working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility) that are involved in goal-directed behaviour and adaptive responses to novel, complex, or ambiguous situations. These cognitive processes are often linked to the prefrontal cortex of the brain and can be profoundly affected by various adversities (e.g. poverty, abuse), especially during early childhood. Regarding the effects of childhood adversities on EF, the deficit model states that disadvantaged children are at risk of experiencing a disruption of neurobiological systems, which leads to EF suppression. In contrast, by highlighting strengths and abilities involved in responding to adversities, an alternative adaptation-based approach to resilience indicates that stressed individuals are specialised and sensitised to demonstrate specific enhancements in cognitive abilities following repeated exposure to childhood adversities. In previous studies on childhood adversities, low family socioeconomic status (SES) has been widely documented as a prominent disadvantage. I conducted a pilot study to examine the effect of SES on EF. The preliminary results indicate that low SES suppressed composite EF skills and working memory rather than inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. My preliminary findings provide evidence for the deficit model but do not support the adaptation-based approach to resilience. My future research will build on the deficit model and the adaptation-based approach to resilience to elucidate potential detriments and benefits of childhood adversities on EF and to further develop tailor-made interventions for children who face various adversities.

 
Assessment of street child interventions in the context of Zambia as a developing nation places emphasis on the use of local social capital in the form of family (human, financial, and social) and community social capital as protective factors against street child-connected lifestyles. The study’s main claim was that weaker family (bonding social capital) and community social capital (bridging social capital) acted as pathways to children developing a street-connected lifestyle. The study has four main objectives; these are firstly to analyse the needs and living conditions of street children of in Lusaka city; secondly, to analyse existing street child interventions in Lusaka city; thirdly, to examine government policy addressing the existing street child situation; and lastly, to develop an integrated social capital framework for street child interventions that adopts a child-sensitive rights-based approach. The study applied a simultaneous mixed-method approach in which a QUAL + QUAN stance was adopted. Primary data collection was done in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. Quantitative data collection involved conducting a cross-sectional descriptive survey of 349 street children’s needs and living conditions. Qualitative data collection involved semi-structured interviews with 40 street children, 4 government officials from relevant departments (social welfare, child development, child protection, and medical social work), 8 intervening street child agencies, 1 representative of the social worker’s association of Zambia, and 4 former social work students who had interned at a street child intervening agency. Preliminary findings on objective one show that large numbers of respondents slept on the street. There was a great degree of influence of friends in respondent’s street-connected lifestyles which created a form of social bonding amongst the respondents that was both positive and negative to their daily existence on the streets. Higher numbers of respondents stated that they sought more informal support from friends and street groups (gangs) than from parents or relatives, pointing to weak connections with their families. A greater percentage of “children of the street” were likely to be part a street group (gang) than “children on the street”. Greater proportions of female respondents were likely to be members of a street gang than male respondents. The main functions of a street group (gang) were found to be friendship and protection. The majority of respondents came from households within which the guardians’ employment status was “unemployed”.

 
The literature on gender and crime begins with a critique of the history of criminology that is portrayed as a history of male researchers studying male offenders, victims, prisoners, and professionals in the criminal justice system. Whereas many studies have been conducted to fill this gap in numerous countries outside Africa and in a few African countries, such studies are yet to be conducted in Uganda. The present study extends research on female prisoners to Uganda with a sample of female prisoners convicted of murder (N = 30) from one female prison in Uganda. Guided by the vast literature that has explored the experience of victimisation among female murderers, this study was located in the social structure of Uganda in order to investigate the different forms of victimisation that female murderers experienced. The forms of victimisation investigated in this study were: childhood victimisation (physical, sexual, and witnessing violence) and intimate partner violence victimisation (IPV) (physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence and controlling behaviour). The study was conducted in a retrospective manner in which women reconstructed their history of victimisation. Theoretically, the study is guided by a socialist feminist perspective and a sociological imagination. Methodologically, it is a qualitative study placed within the qualitative tradition of phenomenology and feminist standpoint epistemology. The study attempts to answer the following questions: what forms of victimisation did women murderers experience? How do women describe their experience of victimisation? What circumstances surrounded women’s victimisation experience? What factors explain women’s inability to escape victimisation? Preliminary findings show that all women had experienced victimisation at one point in their lifetime beginning during childhood (N = 23) and in intimate relations (N = 27). Women described the experience with different forms of victimisation as recurring and enduring. Women’s inability to escape victimisation before killing was linked to interpersonal, sociocultural, economic, and institutional factors in the social structure of Uganda.

 
Despite recognition of the link between childhood abuse and adolescent depression, the underlying mechanisms behind the association remain understudied. This study aims to examine three mediational pathways from childhood abuse and trauma to depressive symptoms through peer alienation and hopelessness. Four wellness factors (body esteem, life meaning, social problem-solving, and equanimity) in the mediating effects were explored. In this cross-sectional study, 786 participants completed measures of childhood abuse and trauma, peer alienation, hopelessness, depressive moods, body esteem, life meaning, social problem solving, and equanimity. The result shows that the association between childhood abuse and trauma was significantly mediated by peer alienation and hopelessness. The higher the level of childhood abuse and trauma, the greater chance of occurrence of peer alienation and hopelessness will be, each of which leads to more depressive symptoms on its own. The result further shows that the combination of a high level of childhood abuse and peer alienation leads to a greater degree of hopelessness, which in turn results in more depressive symptoms. In addition, the result also shows the moderating role played by social problem-solving and equanimity in the indirect relationship between childhood abuse and trauma and depressive symptoms through hopelessness. Furthermore, the moderated serial mediation result also shows that social problem-solving and equanimity are significantly moderated between hopelessness and social problem-solving (hopelessness x social problem-solving: -.13, p < 0.05), as well as equanimity (hopelessness x equanimity: -.07, p < 0.01) respectively. The findings suggest that the indirect effect of childhood abuse and trauma on depressive symptoms through hopelessness differed by social problem-solving and equanimity such that the sequentially mediated relation between childhood abuse and trauma and depressive symptoms will be weaker for those who are stronger in social problem-solving and equanimity. Having said that, the study also provides insight into interventions to prevent or manage depressive symptoms. Instead of targeting childhood abuse and trauma alone, earlier stages of intervention targeting peer alienation and hopelessness, the two psychosocial factors which were found to be crucial in the occurrence of depressive symptoms, could be implemented in the Chinese context so as to yield a better result. The study also shows that social problem-solving and equanimity are two important protective factors for adolescents’ development of depressive symptoms after being subjected to childhood abuse and trauma.

 
Restorative Justice (RJ) mediation has experienced a robust development in Hong Kong in the past decades. The use of restorative mediation had increased particularly in dealing with juvenile justice in schools and among social workers. The use of RJ experienced a decline recently, probably as a result of a huge drop in juvenile crime. The use of mediation has, however, experienced a tremendous growth as a result of the civil justice reform where mediation was promoted as an effective alternative dispute resolution method. Despite the rise in the number of mediation cases and mediators in Hong Kong, RJ was experiencing a fall. This research seeks to explore the issues of this mismatch and the underlying potentials that might possibly re-trigger a rebound of the use of RJ.

 
On 21 October 2016, President Xi Jinping stated on the 80th anniversary of the Great March: “On the journey of the New Great March, we must firmly believe that socialism with Chinese characteristics is the essential pathway towards the modernisation of socialism.” Three months later, Prison B staged a gala themed “Promoting the Spirit of the Great March”, and more than 700 prisoners and officers performed together on stage. This was the most lavish mass gala in Prison B’s history, not uncommon among Chinese prisons, but unheard in Western literature. This study aims to answer the question of why this phenomenon exists only in Chinese prisons. Together with fieldwork on other performances and a weekly drama club led by an ex-prisoner/actor (Jul 2016–Dec 2017), this ethnographic study contributes to the understanding of art’s involvement, offender reform, and civic participation in the context of Chinese penal modernisation, while keeping a dialogue with relevant Western literature. From a social control perspective, this thesis draws from voices of prison leadership, officers, prisoners as well as involved artists in order to fully understand the motivation, mechanism, changes, and dangers of the control processes. It hopes to contribute beyond what Bakken calls the “theatre of redemption” embedded in the Chinese “exemplary control” model, as China continues on the challenging path of “the New Great March”.

 
In the field of affect-cognition interaction, current empirical efforts have focused on investigating the influences of affects on cognition, yet the effects of cognitive processes on the processes of emotional recovery remain underexplored. Filling this gap, this research included three studies to empirically test the conceptual framework proposed, theorising roles of forgetting and post-event processing of emotional trigger in emotional recovery. Targeting the dissociation and consistency during decays, Study 1 enrolled 80 participants in experimental sessions completing video-clip watching, recalling, distraction, and retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) tasks, during which subjective and physiological affect levels were assessed and recorded. Utilising hierarchical regression and hierarchical linear modelling in analysis, the results indicated a significant moderating effect of existence of recall on the relationship between working memory and affect recovery indices, i.e. Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) arousal recovery rate and skin conductance level (SCL) recovery half-life. For emotional recovery with recall, higher working memory was significantly associated with slower recovery in both SAM arousal and SCL, and the link was not observed in emotional recovery with no recall. The shifts from dissociation to consistency, reflected as different fluctuations of affect levels in groups with different working memory abilities, were also confirmed in the slopes of SAM arousal after recall phase. In this phase, the two groups were observed to have distinct signs in affect slope, with a significant increase of subjective arousal in the high working memory group and a significant decrease in the low working memory group. The results served as direct empirical supports for the existence of and the relationship between two processes of recovery proposed in the framework. Investigating recovery processes with various post-event processing of the original trigger, Study 2 and Study 3 enrolled 112 and 108 participants, respectively, in experimental sessions. In both studies, participants were randomly assigned to three groups with distinct sequences of tasks (i.e., clip watching, recalling, and distraction) arranged, with Study 2 testing the recovery status when the event was re-experienced, and Study 3 testing the recovery status when the event was recalled. Study 2 resulted in a significant decrease in reactivation slope during re-experience with more post-event processing in SAM valence, illustrating general impacts of processing level in cognitive recovery indicated by re-experience reactivation. Study 3 confirmed the proposed link among cognitive recovery status, memory, and processing level, unveiling a significant interacting effect of processing level and memory on reactivation slope during recall. Specific emotional recovery profiles for individuals with heterogeneous working memory capacities were further depicted.

 
In recent decades, street protests have captivated attention on a global scale. Young adults in society, especially those in universities, have been increasingly portrayed as the face behind the wave of “new” collective actions, fighting for values, political imaginations, and public goods that benefit the masses. Available models of collective action have, by and large, been able to account for the various mechanisms that predict participation in such movements. However, as I argue, the attention has largely neglected the role of moral selfhood and, especially, its place in the “identity-action” framework of protest studies. Following a mixed methods design, this study seeks to address this void in the literature by providing a comprehensive account of the moral self in political contexts. Presented as a work-in-progress, arguments made in this presentation are constructed based on insights gained from an interdisciplinary review of empirical and theoretical literature (covering moral psychology, sociology, and identity theory), as well as preliminary research results generated from a survey sample of university students.

 
Spousal bereavement is one of the most devastating sufferings in the life course to foment adverse consequences. Meaning-making theory, serving as an up-to-date approach to understanding the negative events in life stages, has earned credit, especially in Western settings. Moreover, the theory is preferable to other conventional theories. However, application of the theory to bereavement in China is virtually unprecedented. These facts thereby lay the groundwork for this study. A sample of 352 older people living in the rural areas participated in the study. This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. It involved five categories of independent variables (social integration, social engagement, intimacy, cultural capital, and social support) and five categories of dependent variables (complicated grief, depression, anxiety, stress, and meaning in life). Quantitative analyses included confirmatory factor analysis and modelling about multiple ways of mediation. Meanwhile, qualitative analysis adhered to the grounded approach. Results suggest that the key views of meaning-making theory are applicable, and the mediating roles of its different components varied according to the type of relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. The qualitative study also reveals a core model of helplessness among bereaved elders.

 
Persistent protests in Hong Kong against the influx of mainland Chinese tourists and migrants have prompted citizens of Hong Kong to construct identities as Hongkongers in contrast to the more traditional identities of mainlanders. Although the parallel trading and Chinese tourism wave have adversely affected the lives of ordinary citizens in various ways, other conflicts among social, political, and economic forces have also demonstrated competition for greater control over Hong Kong, in a process that has intertwined tourism and politics in the region. Among recent trends in the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), geopolitical considerations as well as nationalist and secessionist sentiments in different segments of the two societies have caused politics in the region to become intertwined with tourism. In particular, increased numbers of tourists from mainland China in Hong Kong have had political and social ramifications in Hong Kong, including social movements of nativists and secessionists, the latter of whom sense an urgent need to preserve the identities and ways of life of people in Hong Kong against Chinese influence. The influx of tourists from the mainland has not only begun to affect the quality of daily life in Hong Kong but also become a representative issue of the tension between Hong Kong and China, with some observers even dubbing it a hegemonic crisis. Tourism from the mainland has also precipitated discontent in small communities that has consequently transformed into protests fuelled by anger related to broader political developments and changing community landscapes. Often, such protests have spawned particular identity politics involving nostalgic sentiments of localism. In response, this study traces such change in Hong Kong’s communities as well as their attendant identity politics while arguing that spatial change in communities constitutes estranged urban space that has grown into both sentiment against anti-China-driven development and nostalgia. The study’s empirical part involves innovative uses of Google Maps mixed with participant observations.

 
The illegal trade of wildlife products drives the poaching of endangered species and represents a global conservation, natural resource management, and international law enforcement challenge. The activities of perpetrators in China are increasingly shifting online to exploit the internet’s inherent anonymity and connectivity, yet there is a lack of published criminological literature examining how illegal wildlife product traders exploit the cyberspace. By studying the websites and online communication channels of China, one of the biggest sinks of wildlife products, this study identifies the key online platforms exploited. Following Gambetta’s signalling theory, this study then identifies the signals that illegal traders display online to emphasise their trustworthiness. The online networks of traders of differing commodities are also mapped out using social network analysis to identify the differences in structure, behaviour and activity patterns. The result of this study will inform and facilitate effective actions from law enforcement authorities, conservation professionals, and the private sector.

 
Hong Kong is ranked number 1 in aggression for secondary school children among 72 OECD countries in the latest PISA Report. The prevalence rate was over 30%, where students experienced aggression, in its various forms, physical, verbal, relational and cyber, in past month. Previous research shows aggression has been linked to detrimental social outcomes for schoolchildren. If the aggression issue is not timely tackled, the developmental issues of those at-risk children will worsen, and they will become antisocial criminals and mental health patients when grown up. This will incur huge costs to the society, both financially and socially. Currently, there are a number of school anti-bullying measures, such as restorative justice, disciplinary action, support group, etc. Yet, their outcomes have been unsatisfactory, and the treatment effects have been questionable. Also, these measures are mostly targeted to higher forms of primary and secondary schools. Little focus is put on anti-bullying for lower forms of primary school, both in research or practice. Nevertheless, from a developmental point of view, schoolchildren are in critical stages of emotional, social, moral and cognitive development at this time, where early preventive intervention might be more effective. Bibliotherapy or storytelling, based on the Social Information Processing (SIP) model (Crick & Dodge 1994), could be an innovative anti-bullying intervention that matches the developmental stage of lower primary forms. However, from a theoretical point of view of SIP, aggression has been understood as cognitive distortions at different stages of processing of social information, based on past experiences and knowledge (database/mental structures), and there is little mention of the mechanisms involved in that knowledge. Further understanding of aggression can be enhanced by resorting to other compatible and potentially complimentary theories, like domain model (Arsenio & Lemerise 2004) and theory of mind (Premack & Woodruff 1978), which address moral development and other’s mental states, respectively. There are three objectives of the thesis. The first aim is to integrate the SIP model with other related theories to enhance understanding of the aggression mechanism. The second aim is to assess the effectiveness of bibliotherapy in reducing aggressive behaviour. Thirdly, the integrated SIP model will be applied to explain the effectiveness of bibliotherapy in reducing aggressive behaviour. Finally, the thesis has both theoretical and practical implications. From theory, a more general model is established to integrate SIP with other theories into a single, larger and coherent model in understanding aggression and bibliotherapy. The practical implication is that an early intervention tool, via bibliotherapy, will help primary school educators and social workers tackle bullying and delinquency and, eventually, reduce violence, crime and mental illness in society.

 
Uncertainty prevails in human experience, and it is particularly salient when one is encountering cues suggesting life-threatening illness, with a complex decision-making process of health-seeking followed. Researchers have endeavored to study how people perceive and respond to the uncertainty in illness, yet the involvement of and the interaction with the social network is largely neglected in the literature of illness uncertainty and health-seeking behaviour. Uncertainty brought by the unpredictability of social reactions, the society’s tolerance towards uncertainty, the information flow among members of social networks and the society, and the relations with the healthcare system have attracted increasing attention in the fields of public health and health psychology. They can shed light on understanding the complex socially constructed health-seeking process and in turn better inform the healthcare policy.

 
The median age of women at first childbirth had steadily risen from 28.8 in 1996 to 31.4 in 2016 in Hong Kong. Teenage mothering is likely perceived as a kind of deviance. Teen mothers have been blamed for their early pregnancy and doubted about their capability in caring for their young children. Most research studies also associate early motherhood with a variety of risks for both the children and society. The popular condemnation not only affects the identity formation of the teenage mothers but also denies them the opportunity of being a good mother as well as access to necessary support. The creation of the negative images of the teenage mothers also results in a number of social discriminations that would deprive their rights of taking up the identity of mother in their earlier years as well as for further development as a teenager. The double denials of their identity may lead to further isolation of the teenage mothers. This research project aims at understanding day-to-day experiences of Hong Kong Chinese teenage mothers moving through the transition; articulating the gendered nature of the experiences and the dominant discourse of the teenage mothers; exploring how those experiences and discourse construct their identity; and then reconstructing their identity as a teenage mother through their participation in alternating the meanings of teenage mothers. Finally, an empowerment practice model with critical consciousness is expected to be developed for deconstructing the desirable identity and then reconstructing a more desirable identity of teenage motherhood.

 
After reunification of Hong Kong, more and more Hong Kong young adults are going north to the mainland and attending the mainland universities or seeking careers these years, namely, the interaction between Hong Kong and the mainland has increasingly enhanced, which is determined by socioeconomic factors and subjective values among Hong Kong young adults. Durkheim (1893) first explored the related meaning for social integration in the book The Division of Labor in Society, which was a seminal work on social integration. Based on the phenomenon of the increasing number of Hong Kong young adults attending universities in the mainland, the effect of educational contributions to social integration calls for attention.

 
From the perspective of exchange theory, education is extremely important to the future development of young people in various aspects: personality, intelligence, social network, career and so on. The Hong Kong Government has provided 12-year free education to children and youth. However, if students cannot fit in the education system and refuse to go to school, the students and his/her parents will experience great pressure affecting the future development and being sanctioned by the system for not protecting the education rights of their child, respectively. The free education is also compulsory. I have been working as a school social worker in Hong Kong for more than 10 years. In all my work, I have always been wondering why a group of secondary school students, who were sociable and seemed to me to be intelligent, were refusing to attend schools. Previous studies had given different labels to those students, such as truancy, school refusal, school absenteeism, and so on. The labels given were in accordance with the different factors identified by different perspectives, namely personal pathological, familial to interpersonal, which finally led to different intervention methods. After years of experience of “getting myself involved in these familiar routines of working with them,” I attempted to “think myself away” from it. I started to create an existential model for listening to and understanding them as a real person. I borrowed the term from The Sociological Imagination that these acts are providing us a link to study the “personal troubles to a public issue.” The existentialist humanistic approach views humans as free and responsible beings. They can act authentically by making their own choice in resisting collective and environmental repression. Students who refused to go to school should have their genuine reason. This study will interview a group of those students. It will adopt a qualitative and interactive method to allow the researcher and the young student who has experienced not attending school in the last three years to jointly discover the existentialist humanistic elements in their thinking and experiences when they did not attend school. From the point of view of the students and guided by existentialist humanism, they would be capable to philosophise their reluctance to attend school and express their unique experience and perspectives of the meaning of the school environment.

 
Youth participation has arguably become a political “buzzword” across many democratic societies in recent decades. This recognises both perceived changing governance structures across multiple levels and that young people are a predominantly powerless social group in decision-making processes. On a global scale, the UN advocates youth participation to be a “fundamental right of citizenship”. Though participation has also even advanced to ideas of transforming institutional spaces, as well as “power sharing” between adults and young people. Despite this, there are contested meanings of youth participation along with many uncritical practices. Moreover, youth participation becomes even more challenging when young people who are defined as “at-risk”, “delinquent” or “deviant” can be marginalised from public participation due to their perceived problematic behaviour or may be less likely to engage in participatory spaces with adults. From a post-structural perspective, it is claimed that participation has been utilised as a sophisticated “governance mechanism” to increase control over young people’s behaviour. This contends that youth participation has a profound relationship with politics, power and the state. In the context of Hong Kong, the Government recently announced its commitment to public participation with an explicit focus on young people. However, it has been uncovered that previous research provides ambiguity of what participation means in specific localities. An overview of the literature suggests that youth participation projects require concentrated analysis to unpick the complexities of individual attitudes, norms and beliefs which are at interplay with wider structural contexts. Therefore, this current study will consider historical, political and sociocultural factors that can influence interpretations of participatory initiatives with young people. The aim is to uncover meanings of youth participation in specific localities within the context of Hong Kong, interpreting whether participatory spaces are being renegotiated for young people.

 
Literature on gender and crime begins with the critique of the history of conventional criminology that first focused on men as offenders, victims and prisoners. Whereas many studies on female offenders, victims and prisoners have been conducted to fill this gap in many countries outside Africa and in a few African countries, such studies are yet to be conducted in Uganda. By extending studies on female prisoners to Uganda and filling the gap in the literature, this study intends to explore the female prisoners’ pre-institutional and institutional experience and how they cope with the daily experience in prison. The idea of beginning with the women prisoners’ prior experience is not only based on the view in the literature that women’s experience in prison is related to their prior experience but also on the idea of sociological imagination by Wright Mills, which states that to truly understand the experience of an individual, there is a need to understand the broader societal and historical conditions of that individual (Wright 2000). Though guided by socialist-feminist framework and sociological imagination, the specific context of broader social structure of Uganda is key to the understanding of women prisoners’ experience and generating knowledge for both theoretical and practical implication, especially in identifying the specific needs of female offenders and prisoners in the criminal justice system. Data generation will be guided by qualitative paradigm and feminist standpoint epistemology. Specifically, this study will be located within the qualitative tradition of phenomenology that emphasises putting participant’s lived experience at the centre of research. Phenomenology is compatible with one of the broader feminist principles of bringing women’s experiences to theorisation and with the feminist standpoint’s view of placing women’s experience at the centre of research to generate knowledge for social justice and social change.

 
Academic research specific to masculinities in Asia remains underdeveloped. This is particularly evident in Japan, with men’s studies becoming an increasingly contested discipline in light of significant changes to societal attitudes. Framed as a result of the country’s 1991 economic collapse, once-established gender roles and ideologies now find themselves subject to continued scrutiny. Japanese men, long recognised as the fulcrum of society and epitomised by the breadwinning, nationalistic “salaryman” image for much of the latter 20th century, saw the post-bubble era bring with it a number of sweeping socioeconomic trends impacting on their position as a cultural ideal. In light of said changes, Japan now finds itself subjected to the debated emergence of new, reactionary gender identities. The most prevalent of these — Maki Fukasawa’s Sōshoku(-kei) danshi (herbivore men) — has since come to account for the bulk of literature on Japanese masculinities in the last 10 years. Despite said prevalence, however, related literature suffers from a noticeable lack of coherence. Ambiguities on the term’s proposed meanings, behaviours and existence are widespread and have remained so since 2008. Underlined by a paucity of empirical data to substantiate much of this work, such literature — as with men’s studies as a whole — relies upon a unanimous and somewhat reductionist application of Raewyn Connell’s hegemonic schema, often leading to a dichotomic approach to theorising on Japanese gender politics: salaryman vs. herbivore masculinity. As a consequence, present discourse on Japanese masculinities is characterised via an already ambiguous gender identity positioned in opposition to the increasingly precarious nature of salaryman desirability. As a result, these various processes have led to a contested muddling of contemporary gender discourse on modern Japan. The aim of this study therefore seeks to address three issues: (Provisional/WIP)

• Clarification of the herbivore signifier via a qualitative data collection. What does this term represent beyond its initial conceptualisation ten years ago? The majority of work on herbivore masculinity traditionally relies on secondary source data.
• Situate aforementioned gender identity within a contemporary masculinities schema. Does this represent a form of opposition to/transition of exalted Japanese masculinity?
• Implications for future studies/demographic concerns. As one example, birth rates are intrinsically tied to traditional gender roles. What can empirically grounded perspectives on contemporary gender ideals tell us about such implications?

 
Critical social perspective (Mullaly, 2010) suggests that we live in a social system with oppression. Oppression can happen in different forms, such as exploitation, marginalisation and violence. Also, oppression can be interpersonal, cultural and institutional, which causes a sense of powerlessness. The way we understand and cope with oppression is an important issue to study. The Theatre of the Oppressed is a participatory theatre approach that lets the participants explore their life experience and achieve conscientisation against oppression. Through a theatrical process, the participants will be able to narrate their stories in order to review and reflect on the oppression they are encountering or have experienced. A small-scale qualitative study using the Theatre of the Oppressed as the method of data collection will be conducted with a group of social work students in one university. Social work students are proposed to be the sample of this study for several reasons. Firstly, social work students are university students in a life stage with multi-identity among different social relationships and dynamics, where oppression could be a very close and personal issue to them. Secondly, they are developing themselves to commit to the “helping profession” with a vision of empowering others to cope with oppression. It is necessary for them to explore the way they see the oppression encountered by themselves. Thirdly, “oppression” is not an extensively discussed concept in social work education and social work fields in Hong Kong, so there is room for exploration. Theatre techniques such as image theatre and forum theatre will be employed, and the participants will co-create theatre pieces under the researcher’s facilitation to explore issues surrounding the following areas: how they interpret and define the oppression they are facing; how the oppression affects their lives personally or professionally; what the sources of the oppression are; and in what way do they cope with the oppression. It is believed that using the theatre approach can facilitate the participants to explore their own subjective thoughts, emotions and experiences which are difficult to be shared orally.

 
Youth with disabilities face a variety of challenges as they make school–work transitions. Many youth with disabilities are willing and hoping to enter the working community, but research and statistics show they often face poor career outcomes in comparison to their counterparts. Hong Kong has followed the global legislative changes and the policy trends of inclusive education in schools and higher education. Hong Kong lags behind other places in the developed world when it comes to attracting and supporting students with disabilities in the context of employment after tertiary education. Career development for students in Hong Kong has been criticised as being fragmented, with a superficial focus of information dissemination of education and vocational opportunities, lacking theoretical emphasis and practical practice. Researchers have endeavored to study the contextual factors of improving career development outcomes for youth with disabilities. Researchers have anticipated that increasing self-determination, experiential learning, social support and family support have been beneficial for career decision-making and career self-efficacy in youth with disabilities. However, such areas of research have been developed based on theoretical foundations and populations from the West, and Chinese populations have been largely neglected. Much of the most recent research in Hong Kong regarding career development for youth with disabilities has been solely focused on secondary students and has not been extended to those in tertiary education settings. Moreover, youth with disabilities face unique challenges and therefore call for tailored interventions according to their needs. Lending support to the social cognitive career theory and the ecological systems approach, this study hopes to fill the research gaps and investigate whether there are significant differences in career outcomes in students with disabilities and their normal counterparts in the tertiary education setting in Hong Kong. This study examines the role of family support, social support and mental health towards career development outcomes for youth with disabilities in tertiary education settings. This study develops and tests the effectiveness of interventions to improve self-confidence, positive self-identity and societal misperceptions to empower youth with disabilities towards better career readiness. This study hopes to shed light on understanding the complex issue of career development in youth with disabilities in Hong Kong and inform future education and career policies from a case management perspective.

 
Reading comprehension refers to the ability of processing text, understanding its meaning, and integrating it with what the readers have already known. There are four popular theories: the simple view of reading, the schema-theoretic view, the construction-integration model, and the direct and inferential mediation model, which reveal the mechanism of comprehension difficulties during reading. These theories include a series of factors that determine readers’ cognitive process and impact readers’ experience on knowledge net building. Each factor plays different roles in reading comprehension. Research indicates that early reading experience is the key time for the development of reading comprehension because it contributes to readers’ inference knowledge net formalisation. This study would reveal school-age students’ mechanism of reading comprehension difficulties, trying to use multiple ways, including systematic review, meta-analysis, and longitudinal survey, to confirm the factor(s) which can explain the most variance in reading comprehension difficulties in mother language reading and second language reading. In order to improve readers’ understanding level of the text or passage, this study tries to discover malleable reading factors which are easier to be improved through purposeful training or self-oriented learning.

 
The system framework of resilience has shown that external factors and internal factors both contribute to well-being, but it is not clear whether internal factors work as an underlying mechanism to transmit the effects of external factors on well-being. Given the family orientation in Chinese culture, relationship with mothers may have significant implications on children’s well-being, with the explanation that personal resilience transmits this protective effect. This study aimed to examine the mediating effect of personal resilience in the association between parent-child relationship quality and well-being with a longitudinal study design. A sample of 98 children aged around 11 years in Hong Kong responded at this two-wave longitudinal survey with an interval of 12 months. They completed measures on personal resilience, mother-child relationship quality, and subjective well-being. In addition to concurrent associations at two time points, mother-child relationship quality at baseline was positively correlated with personal resilience (r = .40, p < .01) and well-being (r = .33, p < .01) at one-year follow-up. Resilience at baseline was positively correlated with subjective well-being at one-year follow-up (r = .49, p < .01). The mediation model using half-longitudinal model showed good fit (x2 [7] = 9.7, p = .21; RMSEA = .05; CFI = .99), indicating that the predicting effect of mother-child relationship quality at baseline on subjective well-being one year later was mediated by personal resilience, after controlling for gender and family monthly income. This study highlighted mother-child relationship quality as an external resource of resilience which thereby contributes to well-being among Chinese children. Our findings have strong implications about the development of resilience enhancement programmes among Chinese children to improve their well-being.

 
In response to Hong Kong’s rapid population ageing, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a specially designed “art-based intergenerational reminiscence group programme” (AIR) for the elderly aged 65+ and high school students. Two high school students aged 16–18 with art experience were matched with one elder aged 65+ without art experience for intergenerational contact, involving a total of 35 elders and 70 students in the intervention group (with the AIR programme) and similar number in the control group (with general health lectures and a health acupoint exercise programme). The data were derived from 210 participants including 70 elders and 140 high school students. Two validated scales were adapted to test the dependent variables of “positive accommodation” and “perception of elders/youth”, and three scales were constructed by the author to test the independent variables. Factor analysis and stepwise regression analysis were used to examine the effectiveness on the two dependent variables of various dimensions of the programme, including intergenerational communication strategies, intergenerational contact with art expression, and intergenerational contact with reminiscence approach. For the elderly and the high school students, the outcome in post-test of the intervention group (AIR programme) on accommodation and perception of youth/elderly was significantly higher than the outcome of the control group. For the elderly, overall, the AIR programme was found to be a significant predictor of the elderly’s positive accommodation, while reminiscence approach partially and positively influenced their perception of youth. However, the association between AIR programme and the high school students was mixed.