The current study examined whether different motives for entering teacher education and different coping strategies in distressful situations during teacher training were associated with teacher efficacy among student teachers. A sample of 517 Swedish student teachers completed a questionnaire. According to the findings from multivariate regression analysis, student teachers who scored higher in intrinsic and altruistic motives and cognitive restructuring, and lower in self-criticism, tended to show greater teacher efficacy.

 Objective:  Using a large longitudinal sample of adults from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, the present study extended a recently developed hierarchical model to determine how best to model the accumulation of stressors, and to determine whether the rate of change in stressors or traditional composite scores of stressors are stronger predictors of health outcomes.

 Method:  We used factor analysis to estimate a stress-factor score and then, to operationalize the accumulation of stressors we examined five approaches to aggregating information about repeated exposures to multiple stressors. The predictive validity of these approaches was then assessed in relation to different health outcomes.

 Results:  The prediction of chronic conditions, body mass index, difficulty with activities of daily living, executive function, and episodic memory later in life was strongest when the accumulation of stressors was modeled using total area under the curve (AUC) of estimated factor scores, compared to composite scores that have traditionally been used in studies of cumulative stress, as well as linear rates of change.

 Conclusions:  Like endogenous, biological markers of stress reactivity, AUC for individual trajectories of self-reported stressors shows promise as a data reduction technique to model the accumulation of stressors in longitudinal studies. Overall, our results indicate that considering different quantitative models is critical to understanding the sequelae and predictive power of psychosocial stressors from midlife to late adulthood.

BackgroundMedical students experience emotional challenges during their undergraduate education, often related to work-based learning. Consequently, they may experience feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt, which can negatively affect their well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to support students' development of their ability to manage distressful situations. Self-efficacy beliefs may be a central aspect of supporting them in this development, and have been shown to relate to resilient factors such as students' motivation, learning, and well-being.MethodsWe constructed a scale to measure medical students' physician self-efficacy to manage emotional challenges during work-based learning, the PSMEC scale. The aim of the present study was to evaluate some of the psychometric properties of the PSMEC scale. The scale consists of 17 items covering five subscales: (1) medical knowledge and competence, (2) communication with difficult patients and delivering bad news, (3) being questioned and challenged, (4) educative competence in patient encounters, and (5) ability to establish and maintain relationships with healthcare professionals. Data were collected from 655 medical students from all seven medical schools in Sweden. To investigate the scale's dimensionality and measurement invariance with regard to gender and time in education, single and multiple group confirmatory factor models were estimated using techniques suitable for ordered categorical data. Measures of Cronbach's alpha were calculated to evaluate internal consistency.ResultsThe scale showed good internal consistency on both the global dimension and the five subdimensions of self-efficacy. In addition, the scale was shown to be measurement invariant across genders and times in education, indicating that the scale means of male and female medical students and the scale means of students at the middle and end of their education can be compared.ConclusionsThe physician self-efficacy to manage emotional challenges scale demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, with regards to dimensionality, internal consistency, and measurement invariance relating to gender and time in education, and this study supports the usefulness of this scale when measuring self-efficacy in relation to emotional challenges.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether authoritative teaching at the classroom-level was associated with bullying victimisation, and how this association evolved over the course of upper elementary school (i.e. in grades 4 through 6) by estimating whether the association declined with time. Data came from the first three waves of an ongoing longitudinal project examining social and moral correlates of school bullying. Survey data were analysed from 1,830 students. Multilevel analyses showed that teachers who displayed high levels of warmth, caring, and supportiveness together with high levels of structure, control, and demandingness tended to have students who reported less bullying victimisation. This association between authoritative teaching at the classroom-level and bullying victimisation, while still significant, decreased over the course of the two-year study.

Objectives This paper models cognitive aging, across mid and late life, and estimates birth cohort and sex differences in both initial levels and aging trajectories over time in a sample with multiple cohorts and a wide span of ages. Methods The data used in this study came from the first 9 waves of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, spanning 2002-2019. There were n = 76,014 observations (proportion male 45%). Dependent measures were verbal fluency, immediate recall, delayed recall, and orientation. Data were modeled using a Bayesian logistic growth curve model. Results Cognitive aging was substantial in 3 of the 4 variables examined. For verbal fluency and immediate recall, males and females could expect to lose about 30% of their initial ability between the ages of 52 and 89. Delayed recall showed a steeper decline, with males losing 40% and females losing 50% of their delayed recall ability between ages 52 and 89 (although females had a higher initial level of delayed recall). Orientation alone was not particularly affected by aging, with less than a 10% change for either males or females. Furthermore, we found cohort effects for initial ability level, with particularly steep increases for cohorts born between approximately 1930 and 1950. Discussion These cohort effects generally favored later-born cohorts. Implications and future directions are discussed.

This three-year longitudinal study examined both within- and between-person effects of moral disengagement on verbal bullying perpetration in early adolescence. Data came from the first four waves (T1–T4, Grades 4 to 7) of an ongoing longitudinal project examining social and moral correlates of bullying in Swedish schools. Participants included 2432 Swedish early adolescents (52% girls; Mage at T1 = 10.55 years). Students completed self-report measures of verbal bullying perpetration and moral disengagement. Results of a multilevel growth model showed that verbal bullying increased over time (regression coefficient for Grade was b = 0.04, SE = 0.01, p < .001). Additionally, the verbal bullying trajectories of participants with higher average levels of MD were higher (regression coefficient for MD¯ was b = 0.28, SE = 0.02, p < .001) and steeper (regression coefficient for the Grade ×MD¯ interaction was b = 0.02, SE = 0.01, p = .018), indicating that these students scored higher on verbal bullying in general and increased more in verbal bullying over time, compared to students with lower levels of average MD. Variations around one's own mean of MD over time was also significantly associated with concurrent changes in verbal bullying (regression coefficient for time-varying MD was b = 0.21, SE = 0.01, p < .001).

This study examined the links between seven specific mechanisms of moral disengagement and indirect bullying, direct bullying, and pro-aggressive bystander behavior. In addition, the moderating role of gender on these associations was examined. Participants were 317 Swedish students in Grades 4 to 8 (𝑋⎯⎯⎯age=12.6X¯age=12.6, SD = 1.35; 62% girls). Multivariate multiple regression analyses showed that indirect bullying was predicted by gender and victim attribution. Direct bullying was predicted by moral justification, and for girls, by victim attribution. Pro-aggressive bystander behavior was predicted by diffusion of responsibility, victim attribution, gender, and age. That is, boys and younger students were more prone to take the aggressor’s side compared with girls and older students. Furthermore, the relation between pro-aggressive bystander behavior and distortion of consequences appeared stronger in boys than in girls. These results highlight the relative importance of specific moral disengagement mechanisms and may have implications for interventions targeting bullying.