Volume #17, 1, 2024

Background. Self-efficacy refers to students’ perceived confidence in their ability to tackle learning tasks. Research shows that self-efficacy serves as an important predictor of academic achievement and relates to students’ academic success, self-regulated learning, and motivation. It is therefore important to understand how self-efficacy develops and manifests itself in Russian schoolchildren and relates to their academic achievement.

Objective. To establish evidence of the validity and reliability of domain-specific self-efficacy scales developed for elementary and middle school students.

Design. Messick’s unified framework was used to establish validity. The surveys were administered to elementary and middle school students in two regions of Russia.

Results. The pilot testing of the self-efficacy scales for elementary school, using exploratory (n = 972) and confirmatory (n = 972) factor analyses, resulted in a four-factor model, which was later confirmed with a different sample of elementary students (n = 1,392) with good reliability estimates (α = 0.75–0.82). The pilot testing of self-efficacy scales for middle school, using exploratory (n = 583) and confirmatory (n = 584) factor analyses, resulted in a three-factor model, showing excellent reliability estimates (α = 0.88–0.93).

Conclusion. The evidence of construct validity suggests that the domain-specific self-efficacy scales for elementary and middle school students can be recommended for use by researchers and practitioners. The article presents ideas for additional validation studies and future research using domain-specific self-efficacy scales.

Background. Facebook* is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. The use of Facebook* can lead to several problems, such as Facebook* addiction. Previous studies have investigated the effects of reinforcing factors on problematic Facebook* use, but negative factors have been little studied.

Objective. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivation and Facebook* addiction, and examine the influence of positive and negative emotions, which serve as reinforcement and punishment when using Facebook*.

Design. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 294 university students in Vietnam, with a mean age of 19.93 and a standard deviation of 1.27. The Bergen Facebook* Addiction Scale, the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience, and the Motives for Facebook* Use Scale were used to collect the data. SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 20 software were used for data analysis.

Results. The results indicated that the students’ motivations to maintain relationships and pass time were positively associated with Facebook* usage, while motivations for virtual community, entertainment, “coolness,” and companionship did not significantly influence Facebook* usage. This use of Facebook* was found to elicit both positive and negative emotions. Both these emotions were associated with an increase in Facebook* addiction among the students.

Conclusion. These results support the view that Facebook* addiction is positively associated with satisfaction with Facebook* use, and that both positive and negative emotions are associated with an increase in Facebook* addiction. Several limitations of the study are clarified.

Background. Migration intentions are extremely common among modern youth practically all around the globe. They do not always result in actual migration, but they should definitely be considered as an important indicator for the society, since the potential loss of the most valuable human resources entails long-term consequences for the development of a country or region. This study aims to examine the system of psychological factors that determine the desire of young people to stay in their region. It also addresses the previously discovered paradoxical association between migration intentions and subjective well-being.

Objective. To analyze the psychological determinants of the intention not to leave the home region, and its association with relationship satisfaction, personal goals, subjective well-being, and academic achievement of high school students.

Design. The cross-sectional study design was used. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted among Russian high school students from urban and rural schools (N = 5,635).

Results. The study found that the most important psychological predictors of the intention to stay, to study, and work in their home city/region are community contribution goals and psychological factors that characterize the immediate social environment, which include satisfaction with school and teachers, and family support. Controlling for these variables, migration intentions do not correlate with subjective well-being.

Conclusion. These findings suggest that considering the quality of interpersonal relationships allows deepening the understanding of migration intentions sources of high school students. The study also contributes to understanding the complex relationship among migration intentions, subjective well-being, and academic achievement.

Background. Currently, psychological knowledge integrates theories on codependent behavior, advancing our understanding of this phenomenon. However, empirical research is lacking to understand its specific manifestations in relation to different types of addiction.

Objective. To identify the features of self-attitude and reflection in codependent women.

Design. The study included 233 women (ages 18–70), including 102 in relationships with a person addicted to alcohol, drugs, or suffering from a non-chemical addiction). The study was conducted using the following methods: Self-Attitude Questionnaire (Stolin & Panteleev, 1988); Differential Type of Reflection Questionnaire (Leontiev, 2009); and Codependency Self-Inventory Scale (CSIS; Weinhold & Weinhold, 1989; translated by A. G. Cheslavskaya, 2002).

Results. Significant differences were observed in self-attitude and reflection. Women with high codependency have lower self-esteem and tend to underestimate their abilities, compared to the control group. They also exhibit a lower sense of control over their lives, lower self-consistency; they tend to focus on their weaknesses and shortcomings and are more inclined to self-blame. Quasi-reflexivity is more common in codependent women who have relationships with non-chemical addicts or do not identify an addict in their lives.

Conclusion. There are significant differences in self-attitude and reflection between the control group and subgroups of women in relationships with different types of addicts; the same differences were observed in comparison of women with low and high codependency levels. The study contributes to a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying codependent behavior in women and has implications for future research and clinical practice.

Background. Some studies connect the popularity of food-tracking apps to an increase in restrictive eating and other disordered eating behaviors and find those apps harmful for psychological well-being, but there is a lack of empirical studies, especially of Russian samples.

Objective. To examine the connection between disordered eating symptoms, psychological well-being, and the use of a mobile food-tracking application.

Design. The participants were 26 women aged 18–30 (M = 21.96; SD = 3.33); 24 completed the study. During the pre-test, the participants completed the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (Van Strien et al., 1985), the Eating Attitude Test (Skugarevskiĭ, 2007), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Ma et al., 2023), the Situation Inventory of Body-Image Dysphoria (Baranskaia & Tataurova, 2011), and a socio-demographic survey with additional questions related to food tracking, weight, and disordered eating. The experimental group was then tasked with tracking their food consumption with a mobile app for a month. The test battery was completed again immediately after the experiment ended, and for a third time one month later.

Results. The comparative analysis showed a decrease in anxiety throughout the study, with a tendency-level increase in depressive symptoms by the end of the experiment. Contrary to expectations, emotional and external eating decreased during the experiment, while restrictive eating did not change. However, the risk of general disordered eating behavior increased one month after the experiment. The correlations between psychological well-being and eating behavior changed during the study. Immediately after the experiment, more correlations between eating behavior, body dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression emerged, while at the later cutoff, correlations with depression and anxiety became insignificant.

Conclusion. The study had mixed results, contradicting some previous research. Both emotional and external eating decreased along with anxiety levels; however, general disordered eating symptoms increased after food tracking.

Background. Modern society is characterized by the widespread use of social media, which provides users with new communication, leisure, work, and study opportunities. The growth of online communication time leads to the development of new special communicative needs. These circumstances prompted us to develop the “Questionnaire on Adolescents’ Needs to Communicate with Their Parents Online and Offline” (QANCP).

Objective. We set out to study the relationship between adolescents’ hierarchy of communicative needs and the characteristics of child-parent relations by developing and testing the psychometric characteristics of the QANCP.

Design. One hundred and twenty-eight teenagers (56 boys and 72 girls, age 15-17) took part in the research. The research methods included theoretical analysis, modeling, questionnaires, and statistical analysis. The tools used were: 1) the customized (authorial) “Questionnaire of adolescents’ needs to communicate with their parents online and offline” (QANCP); and 2) the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) by Armsden and Greenberg (1987) in the Sadovnikova and Eliseeva adaptation (Eliseeva, 2013).

Results. The results of the qualitative research proved the acceptability of the QANCP scales. Expert assessments showed that the test had sufficient face and content validity. Statistically significant differences in the parameters measuring adolescents’ communicative needs in groups with different types of relations with their parents were established.

Conclusion. Testing of the QANCP questionnaire showed that the QANCP is a valid and reliable instrument to measure adolescents’ communication with their parents in online and offline formats. It was established that there is a connection between the characteristics of child-parent relations in adolescence and the hierarchy of communication needs of “adolescent-parent” communication online and offline.

Background. Theory of mind is the capacity to explain and predict the behavior of others. Charles Fernyhough’s dialogical model of psychological functions offers a vision of theory of mind that considers the social dimension and the importance of language, especially inner and private speech, for a person’s ability to represent and manipulate multiple perspectives, and its connection to executive function.

Objective. There is little direct research on Fernyhough’s model. The present study addressed that gap by studying the relationship between theory of mind, private speech, and executive function (planning) in the preschool years.

Design. Data were collected from a total of 86 preschool children from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala; 24 were from the first grade of preschool, 30 from the second, and 32 from the third. Their degree of internalization and their speech types (i.e., social and private) were obtained by coding their utterances during free play and during performance of a Tower of London task. Lastly, their theory of mind was assessed with a change of location and an unexpected contents task.

Results. No correlation was found between children’s theory of mind and their degree of internalization. However, inaudible private speech was correlated (negatively) to theory of mind performance in the third grade of preschool. Furthermore, their scores on the Tower of London task were negatively correlated with social speech and positively correlated with inaudible private speech, while the reverse was true for time of execution.

Conclusion. The results suggested that the degree of internalization is a measure of the regulative function of language, not the ability to manipulate perspectives, and that it is inadequate for capturing subtle differences between performance and speech types. Role-playing conditions were recommended as better tasks for exploring the capacities for manipulating and understanding different perspectives during the preschool years.