The Grass is Greener: How Greenery Impacts the Perceptions of Urban Residential Property

Can different types of greenery improve the perceived value, safety, prestige, coziness, and aesthetics of multistory residential buildings?<br />To find the answer, two studies were carried out. In Study 1, participants filled in questionnaires designed to measure the perceived value,<br />safety, prestige, coziness, and aesthetics of a building. Every questionnaire was accompanied with one of four images of the same residential building, the only difference between them was the type of greenery present near the building. Participants were asked to evaluate the building in the image by filling in the questionnaire. A convenience sample of 238 university students (mean age 20, SD = 2) participated in the experiment. Study 2 was an internet-based survey in which participants were presented with four images of a residential building and were asked to identify the most cozy, most expensive, most prestigious, most safe, and most aesthetic building. The pictures were the same as in Study 1. A snowball sample of 356 respondents (mean age 30, SD = 11) participated in the survey. The results indicate that buildings with sophisticated greenery and plain grass greenery are perceived most favorably, while unkempt and chaotic greenery were found to be associated with worse overall perceptions and decreased perceived value of residential property. When creating green spaces near residential buildings, we recommend considering plain grass greenery as it is the most cost-effective solution and has a positive effect on the perceptions of residential property and its value.

Socio-demographic and Subjective Well-being Predictors of Social and Emotional Loneliness

This research examined the relationship between loneliness and psychosocial variables among people from Portugal across the adult life span. The study examined, besides socio-demographic predictors, subjective well-being predictors of social and emotional loneliness. The sample was constituted by 1,209 participants with a mean age of 38.12 (SD = 17.49) and a range between 18 and 90 years. Social, family and romantic loneliness were measured (DiTommaso, Brannen, &amp; Best, 2004). Overall, social, family and romantic loneliness were significantly associated with the indicators of subjective well-being. Subjective well-being factors accounted also for a larger proportion of the explained variance in social, family and romantic loneliness scores than socio-demographic factors. Limitations of the research are discussed.

Acculturation Profiles and Perceived Discrimination: Associations with Psychosocial Well-being Among Tunisian Adolescents in Italy

Research usually analyzed the relationships between acculturation or perceived discrimination and immigrants’ well-being, but few studies used an integrative perspective. Framed from a person-oriented approach, the current paper tried to advance the literature examining how acculturation profiles and perceived (group and personal) discrimination were associated with psychosocial well-being in a sample of 348 Tunisian adolescents (females = 48.28%; mean age = 15.72) living in southern Italy. Cluster analytic methods on the scores of acculturation strategies, ethnic and national identities, ethnic and national languages, ethnic and national peer social contacts produced three acculturation profiles: integrated, ethnic, and national. Adolescents of both integrated and national profiles reported higher levels of psychosocial well-being than those of the ethnic profile in terms of self-esteem and socio-cultural competence, whereas Tunisian adolescents of ethnic profile reported higher levels of perceived personal discrimination than the others. Also, the acculturation profile moderated the relationships between perceived discrimination and adolescents’ psychosocial well-being. Specifically, across integration and national profiles perceived group discrimination significantly predicted decreases in psychosocial well-being, but there was no significant association considering the ethnic profile group. The association between perceived personal discrimination and psychosocial well-being was moderated since it was more negative for adolescents of an ethnic profile than the others. Findings are discussed in the light of theoretical expectations, research context, and limitations as well as suggesting implications for the practitioners in the field.

Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale in Argentina, Mexico and Nicaragua

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, &amp; Griffin, 1985) is one of the most widely used scales for the measurement of well-being. Nevertheless, its measurement invariance and factor structure have not been investigated simultaneously across culturally diverse samples in Latin America. The current paper evaluates the factorial structure and measurement invariance of SWLS (the degree to which the scale measurements conducted across different populations exhibit identical psychometric properties) as to provide solid and accurate basis for cultural group comparisons. We apply measurement invariance testing procedures using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to investigate the factorial structure and invariance of the scale across three cultural groups from Argentina, Mexico and Nicaragua. We also estimate and compare latent means of life satisfaction across groups. Participants were 921 adults (mean age 29.66, SD = 11.48) from Argentina (n = 192), Mexico (n = 421) and Nicaragua (n = 302). First, confirmatory factor analyzes (CFA) conducted separately for each cultural group provided support for the one-factor structure of the instrument. Second, the MGCFA showed good configural, metric and scalar invariance models, indicating similar patterns and strengths in factor loadings, means and intercepts across cultural samples. Third, latent mean comparisons did not show group differences in life satisfaction. We conclude that the SWLS is a brief and valid measure of life satisfaction that can be used for cross-cultural comparison with samples from Argentina, Mexico and Nicaragua.

Systematic Review of the Measurement Properties of Questionnaires for the Measurement of the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents

The objective of this study was to systematically review the psychometric properties of the measures used in assessing the psychosocial well-being status of children and adolescents. This review updates and expands on the previous review of the literature on child well-being in order to assess all available studies from 2000 to 2013 on the measurement properties of all available well-being assessment instruments that aim to measure the construct of well-being in childhood and adolescence. Overall, 182 measures designed for measuring child and adolescent well-being were found. These measures vary in length and structure from one item scales to multidimensional questionnaires with 70 items and more. Most of the instruments measure positive indicators of well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, quality of life, self-esteem, etc.), others measure deficit indicators (e.g., anxiety, depression, stress, etc.), and a few instruments measure both positive and deficit indicators. In addition, there are some instruments with undefined modality of well-being. Thus, our study has revealed an ongoing theoretical shift from a deficit approach to well-being to a strengths-based approach. The results also indicate that the reliability information is reported for the majority of the instruments. The most frequently used reliability measure for all these instruments is the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient. The reports of validity are available for approximately one-third of the instruments. Measures of well-being in adolescence are dominant, however, some instruments are suitable for the measurement of well-being and its indicators in childhood, and some reach the period of emerging adulthood (19-21 years). Most of the studies were conducted in North America and Europe with only a few of them being cross-cultural.

Half Full or Half Empty: The Measurement of Mental Health and Mental Illness in Emerging Australian Adults

Narrow approaches to the conceptualisation and measurement of ‘mental health’ are regularly but inconsistently adopted in research and practice. For example, an exclusive focus on the identification of mental illness or mental wellbeing runs the risk of failing to detect individuals with low or high levels of the other, and does nothing to represent an individual’s level of complete mental health (i.e., taking both mental wellbeing and illness into account). The current study compared three approaches to the measurement of mental health regularly applied in the literature - an exclusive mental wellbeing / an exclusive mental illness / and a complete mental health approach – to determine if they produce similar outcomes. South Australian emerging adults were recruited (N=117; M=24.4 years, SD=0.75) and categorised into four mental health groups according to the Complete State Model (CSM; Keyes &amp; Lopez, 2002) of mental health: flourishing (complete mental health), languishing or struggling (incomplete mental health or illness), or floundering (complete mental illness) and categories were compared. Results showed that the ‘mental health’ of the sample differed depending on the measurement approach used, and lend support to a complete mental health approach to better inform, develop, and target health promotion strategies.