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In this practice-based pedagogical paper, we, the university faculty of Education, Food and Nutrition, Sociology, and History in the U.S., describe how we started a Reflective Practice Teaching Circle at our institution for interdisciplinary dialogue about the effective use of social media (SM) for teaching and learning. Our discussions led to the design of the Social Media Entry Model that educators can use for decision-making. We begin this paper with a brief synthesis of scholarly literature describing students' SM use and how higher education faculty use SM to support 21st-century skills development. Next, we describe the institutional, individual, and pedagogical barriers that prevent faculty from embracing SM as a teaching and learning tool. Based on our shared vision and praxis, we present the Social Media Entry Model and describe how educators can use it when deciding how to integrate SM into the formal or informal curriculum. Through our narratives, we illustrate how we use a variety of SM platforms and different entry points in the model to enhance students' 21st-century skills. We also discuss the legal and ethical issues that educators must consider to ensure that university students use SM in a socially responsible manner.

This paper discusses the conception of a joint intercultural students' research program of one German and two Kyrgyzstani teachers and students from the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg (Germany) and the American University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). The paper conceptualizes such a research training program and gives reference to qualitative methods teaching in the two corresponding universities. What follows is a description of the chosen research topic: "The 'Intersections' of Gender, Family, and Society in Kyrgyzstan" and the course program. With different academic cultures concerning research ethics in the Anglo-Saxon and continental European contexts, a challenge for such a program will be addressed. A short review of the research results of the different students' teams is provided, and the paper is finalized with a self-reflection upon such a joint intercultural undertaking.

The paper focuses on the sociological adaptation and development of the mental mapping method within the study of national identity. 'Mental map' is defined as a spatial image or model formed over time in the individual or collective consciousness, while the method of mental mapping is interpreted as a graphic representation of a certain area by an informant at the request of a researcher. The study is based on the empirical application of mental mapping to the analysis of national identity among Ukrainian students (n=942). The paper outlines methodological and theoretical specifics of mental mapping and indicates perspectives of this method in the context of a visual sociological paradigm.

This Quick Hit discusses an exploratory approach to integrating print newspaper into the college classroom as a method to connect journalism with theoretical knowledge. Daily copies of The New York Times were provided to students in an Introductory Sociology course throughout the duration of a semester. Working in groups, students regularly read articles in the paper and searched for stories related to a wide variety of sociological issues. As a final project, students wrote detailed summaries of several articles published throughout the semester that contained key sociological concepts and themes studied in the class. Nearly all students in the course reported that consistent readership over a 12-week period of the semester was an effective learning activity that expanded their understanding and exposure to core sociological issues.

This theoretical paper anchors service learning (S-L) in three broad sociological theories. From there, discussions on the actual implementation of S-L based on these theories are explained to build an integrated S-L sociological framework. Four S-L modalities of community engagement are identified--namely transactional, transitional, transformational, and transcendental--with their corresponding respective levels of community participation--namely consultative tokenism, placation, partnerships, and citizen control. The application of such a coherent framework is discussed in the context of contemporary service-learning practices and community impact.

This paper reports on a needs analysis that sought to explore students' reading challenges as an initial step in designing an appropriate reading intervention programme for first-year Sociology students. The aim of the paper is to suggest conditions for the production of an effective reading intervention programme by determining the needs of the students in the first-year Sociology class. A survey using an open-ended questionnaire was used to explore students' reading challenges. The responses were analysed using content analysis. The analysis showed a variety of learner needs and revealed that most of the students have difficulty in reading their first-year Sociology texts. Comprehension was the main challenge, but other specific areas such as vocabulary, length of texts, language, and affective issues such as motivation and interest were also mentioned. The findings show that this cohort of first-year Sociology students had reading challenges that involve cognitive, language and affective issues. Based on the results of the needs analysis an intervention programme that addresses cognitive, language and affective issues is recommended for this cohort of students.

Open educational resources (OER), including open textbooks, are free, adaptable learning resources. The integration of these materials in place of commercial textbooks allows for considerable financial savings for students and creates opportunities for more active and engaged learning. The growing interest in the use of OER at a Western Canadian university led to the chance to survey students for their feedback on using OER instead of traditional commercial textbooks. This paper focuses on the views of students in an introductory sociology course for which an instructor adopted an open textbook and otherwise left the course unchanged from when it was taught with a traditional textbook. In addition, completion rates for the offerings with the open textbook are compared to previous offerings with a commercial textbook.

As the use of social media in post-secondary education expands, so does the research literature examining its effectiveness in engaging students. Studies have examined the use of Twitter as an assessment and engagement tool, and since this is a broad and growing research area, better understanding whether Twitter can promote these outcomes in an upper-level university course is valuable. This paper explores these themes based on a student survey (N=37) conducted in a Sociology Deviance course. It also reviews how students responded to the use of Twitter as a "community-classroom" engagement and assessment tool. Findings reveal that Twitter did contribute to some students' sense of community. We offer suggestions for how instructors can successfully integrate Twitter activities into their course assessment to make them more engaging and to improve connectedness.

One year ago, Baltimore citizens took to the streets to protest not only the death of Freddie Grey, but the structural inequalities and structural violence that systematically limit the opportunities for working-class African Americans in Baltimore. The protests, though, were not just confined to Baltimore City. Borne on sophisticated understandings of intersectionality and political economy, the moral imperatives from the Baltimore Uprising resonated with students at our university in Baltimore County, where campus activists moved to both support the people of Baltimore while using the moment of critical reflection to critique racial inequalities on campus. Since students were displaying a holistic, anthropological understanding of race and inequality in Baltimore, we decided to structure our classes accordingly and brought together several courses in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice in order to examine the interrelationships between power, race, class, public space and urban development. We taught common texts, visited each other's classes, and planned events that brought students together with community leaders in Baltimore to discuss common concerns and to learn from each other. This paper reports on that experiment and suggests that a pedagogical model premised on drawing thematic linkages between existing courses is one way to address current events that impact us all while allowing students to direct the course of their own education.

Although social inequality is critical to the study of sociology, it is particularly challenging to teach about race, class and gender inequality to students who belong to privileged social groups. Simulation games are often used successfully to address this pedagogical challenge. While debriefing is a critical component of simulation exercises that focus on teaching about social inequality, empirical assessments of the significance and effectiveness of this tool is virtually nonexistent in sociology and other social sciences. This paper analyzes the significance of debriefing in a simulation game called "Cultural Capital in the Classroom" in order to address this lacunae in the pedagogy literature. The analyses reveal that the simulation contributed to students developing a greater degree of empathy for the working class and that the individual debriefing was a crucial step in developing students' critical thinking skills. Students gain even deeper insights during the collective debriefing session, which influenced them to question the validity of the ideology of meritocracy.

In parallel with their counterparts in neighboring countries, specifically Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, Hungarian university students also exhibit a high level of involvement in internet activities, particularly within the realm of online social networking. Our quantitative data analysis, in line with our primary hypothesis, reveals a substantial proportion of university students displaying additional awareness also of academic online platforms (hereinafter: AOPs) specifically. These platforms, as per our typology, encompass the following categories: (1) academic online social networking sites; (2) databases lacking social features; and (3) author profiles linked to publishers. Notably, student awareness is most prominently affiliated with academic social networking sites offering comprehensive access to full-paper views. The data gathered in the framework of qualitative research was based on a contingent of 100 university respondents' (mostly female residents of the capital Budapest) answers to seven demographic and thematic questions The corresponding findings further indicate that, with the exception of a notable segment actively engaging with these AOPs, the majority of students exhibit sporadic usage patterns concentrated during specific seasonal peaks. At the same time, author profiles linked to publishers currently remain beyond the immediate reach of the broader student population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the expectations regarding university studies and career choice of first-generation university students and graduates. Our interest in this particular population is due to the fact that they are atypical cases. The theoretical perspective is the relationship with knowledge and dispositionalist and contextualist sociology. The methodology is qualitative and we used in-depth interviews with a sample of 35 students from three degree courses at the National University of La Plata. The families and the school experience were central in the construction of expectations, while the choice of career was defined on the basis of the transit through secondary school, in the university experience itself as well as in other non-school environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses letters – some unpublished – from the mid-1940s and the second half of the 1970s exchanged by Mattei Dogan and Henri H. Stahl, to render the way sociological education was organized at the University of Bucharest immediately after the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaged scholarship, a movement that has been growing steadily since 1995, offers a new way of bridging gaps between the university and civil society. Numerous papers and reports have been published since Boyer’s foundational discourse in 1996. Yet, beyond a growing interest in orienting universities’ missions, we observed a lack a formal definition and conceptualization of this movement. Based on a scoping review of the literature over the past 20 years, the objective of this article is to propose a conceptualization of engaged scholarship. More specifically, we define its values, principles, and processes. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this new posture for faculty and students, as well as for the university as an institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual assault on college campuses is a public health issue. However varying research methodologies (e.g., different sexual assault definitions, measures, assessment timeframes) and low response rates hamper efforts to define the scope of the problem. To illuminate the complexity of campus sexual assault, we collected survey data from a large population-based random sample of undergraduate students from Columbia University and Barnard College in New York City, using evidence based methods to maximize response rates and sample representativeness, and behaviorally specific measures of sexual assault to accurately capture victimization rates. This paper focuses on student experiences of different types of sexual assault victimization, as well as sociodemographic, social, and risk environment correlates. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression were used to estimate prevalences and test associations. Since college entry, 22% of students reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual assault (defined as sexualized touching, attempted penetration [oral, anal, vaginal, other], or completed penetration). Women and gender nonconforming students reported the highest rates (28% and 38%, respectively), although men also reported sexual assault (12.5%). Across types of assault and gender groups, incapacitation due to alcohol and drug use and/or other factors was the perpetration method reported most frequently (> 50%); physical force (particularly for completed penetration in women) and verbal coercion were also commonly reported. Factors associated with increased risk for sexual assault included non-heterosexual identity, difficulty paying for basic necessities, fraternity/sorority membership, participation in more casual sexual encounters (“hook ups”) vs. exclusive/monogamous or no sexual relationships, binge drinking, and experiencing sexual assault before college. High rates of re-victimization during college were reported across gender groups. Our study is consistent with prevalence findings previously reported. Variation in types of assault and methods of perpetration experienced across gender groups highlight the need to develop prevention strategies tailored to specific risk groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on our site investigation conducted in 2013, we found that the pedestrian red light crossing at the midblock connecting the campus of Southwest University and living area was low, where most of pedestrians are university students and staff. This paper reports a supplementary work applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to identify any psychological differences toward pedestrian red light crossing between university students and their peers. Three social groups participated in the investigation. The first group is the university students in Grade one (Group 1), the other two groups are their previous senior middle school classmates who are now working full time (Group 2) or who are now out of work and school (Group 3). The statistical results indicated The TPB components accounted for 42.9%, 55.3% and 55.4% of the variance of red signal crossing intention for Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3 in the depicted road crossing scenario. The data also showed that there are obvious differences among the participants’ responses to “refrain from crossing” between university students and others, and the subsequent regression analysis revealed the ability to “refrain from crossing” played the most important role in the intention of red light crossing in the depicted scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundSleep duration and quality are associated with physical and mental wellbeing. This paper examines social network effects on individual level change in the sleep quantity and quality from late adolescence to emerging adulthood and its associated factors, including the influence of peers on sleep behavior and the impact of changes in network size.MethodsWe use sleep data from 619 undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame obtained via Fitbit devices as part of the NetHealth project. The data were collected between August 16, 2015 and May 13, 2017. We model trends in sleep behaviors using latent growth-curve models.ResultsControlling for the many factors known to impact sleep quantity and quality, we find two social network effects: increasing network size is associated with less sleep and a student's sleep levels are influenced by his or her peers. While we do not find any consistent decline in sleep quantity over the 637 days, daily fluctuations in sleep quantity are associated with changes in network size and the composition of a student's network. As a student's network gets bigger, s/he sleeps less, and when a student's contacts sleep more (or less) than s/he does, the student becomes more like his or her contacts and sleeps more (or less).ConclusionsSocial networks can and do impact sleep, especially sleep quantity. In contexts where students want to have larger networks, the difficulties of increasing network size and maintaining larger networks negatively impact sleep. Because of peer influence, the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve sleep practices could be increased by leveraging student social networks to help diffuse better sleep habits.

Among the Victorians who contributed to British sociology were the social theorist Harriet Martineau and a peculiar trio of Oxford students called the 'Mumbo Jumbo club'. Martineau published an English 'condensation' of Auguste Comte's Cours de philosophie positive (1830-42), which introduced sociology to English readers. While under the watchful eye of the Oxford don Richard Congreve, Mumbo Jumbo read Martineau's study with great enthusiasm, and it shaped their course as firstgeneration sociologists. Using an intellectual history method, this essay argues that as the first female British sociologist, Martineau pioneered an abolitionist-feminist approach to the discipline in such works as Society in America (1837). Meanwhile, on leaving Oxford, Mumbo Jumbo became the first British Positivist Society members. They not only translated but acted on the ideas in Comte's Système de politique positive (1851-4), which their leader, Congreve, described as the 'definitive construction' of sociology. Whereas Martineau's work offered an abolitionist-feminist framework for sociology, the Mumbo Jumbo trio--J.H. Bridges, E.S. Beesly, and Frederic Harrison--developed biologic-historical, socio-political, and urban-regional strands of sociological thinking respectively. While examining these sociologists' lives and complementary methods, this essay argues that theirs was a distinctly utopian if critical, imaginative, and optimistic sociology, just as some people suggested was the discipline at the founding meetings of the British Sociological Society. Thus, the works of Martineau and Mumbo Jumbo, from compatible Comtean perspectives, aimed to transform thoughts and feelings into social actions for resolving societal issues and personal troubles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature suggests that post-secondary students experience food insecurity (FI) at greater rates than the general population. However, these rates vary dramatically across institutions and studies. FI assessment methods commonly used in studies with college students have not been scrutinized for psychometric properties, and varying protocols may influence resulting FI prevalence estimates. The objective of this study was to assess the performance of standard food security assessment protocols and to evaluate their agreement as well as the relative accuracy of these protocols in identifying student FI. A randomized sample of 4,000 undergraduate students were invited to participate in an online survey (Qualtrics, LLC, Provo, Utah, USA) that evaluated sociodemographic characteristics and FI with the 2-item food sufficiency screener and the 10-item USDA Adult Food Security Survey Module (FSSM; containing the abbreviated 6-item module). Four hundred sixty-two eligible responses were included in the final sample. The psychometric analysis revealed inconsistencies in college student response patterns on the FSSM when compared to national evaluations. Agreement between FI protocols was generally high (>90%) but was lessened when compared with a protocol that incorporated the 2-item screener. The 10-item FSSM with the 2-item screener had the best model fit (McFadden's R2 = 0.15 and Bayesian Information Criterion = -2049.72) and emerged as the tool providing the greatest relative accuracy for identifying students with FI. Though the 10-item FSSM and 2-item screener yields the most accuracy in this sample, it is unknown why students respond to FSSM items differently than the general population. Further qualitative and quantitative evaluations are needed to determine which assessment protocol is the most valid and reliable for use in accurately identifying FI in post-secondary students across the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concepts of 464 university freshmen towards Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) were analyzed. Responses were classified into seven main categories: ‘ecological aspects’, ‘ecological problems’, ‘economical aspects’, ‘social aspects’, ‘environmental attitudes’, ‘environmental behavior’ and ‘education’. Analyses of sustainability concepts show a large discrepancy between EE and ESD, whereby the latter includes an additional sub-group: ‘the next generation aspect’. Labeling individual sources of EE in a retrospective assessment identified the family as the most important source of knowledge, followed by media, school and outreach. Further differences were detected between students’ self-perception and their ideal conception of environmental behavior, by using the scale Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS). Only some EE statements produced higher (unfulfilled) expectations ‘economic aspects’, ‘environmental behavior’ and ‘ecological problems’. In contrast fewer (unfulfilled) expectations were observed in the categories of ‘education’ and ‘ecological aspects’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the high cost of the research assessment exercises in the UK, many have called for simpler and less time-consuming alternatives. In this work, we gathered publicly available REF data, combined them with library-subscribed data, and used machine learning to examine whether the overall result of the Research Excellence Framework 2014 could be replicated. A Bayesian additive regression tree model predicting university grade point average (GPA) from an initial set of 18 candidate explanatory variables was developed. One hundred and nine universities were randomly divided into a training set (n = 79) and test set (n = 30). The model “learned” associations between GPA and the other variables in the training set and was made to predict the GPA of universities in the test set. GPA could be predicted from just three variables: the number of Web of Science documents, entry tariff, and percentage of students coming from state schools (r-squared = .88). Implications of this finding are discussed and proposals are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of young girls have attached great importance to their body-image in China. Body-image dissatisfaction has resulted in increased weight loss behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that were associated with underweight body-image in female college students. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 2,023 young female participants from eight Chinese universities. In addition, 160 participants were involved in a qualitative study. The ideal body-image and the factors that influence weight were determined using descriptive and analytical statistics. We found that 1,484 out of 2,023 participants (73.36%) had taken action to lose weight in the past six months. Among these participants, 618 (30.55%, out of 2023) participants were already underweight, and 1,161 (57.39%, out of 2023) would like to be much thinner, which would lead to more underweight individuals. Moreover, non-scientific physical activity and diets were found to lead participants to the underweight subgroup. The participants’ Body Mass Index (BMI), peer advice and western culture influenced the problematic thin-ideal (ideal BMI < 18.5 was considered as the problematic thin-ideal) (P<0.05). Together, western influences leading to the “problematic thin-ideal” and “unhealthy weight-control behavior” have brought about an increased prevalence of desired underweight body-image among female college students in China, which might be harmful for their health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher Education (HE), once the prerogative of a tiny elite, is now accessible to larger numbers of people around the world than ever before yet despite the fact that an understanding of student satisfaction has never been more important for today’s universities, the concept remains poorly understood. Here we use published data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS), representing data from 2.3 million full-time students collected from 2007 to 2016, as a case study of the benefits and limitations of measuring student satisfaction that might have applicability for other countries, particularly those that, like the UK, have experienced significant growth in student numbers. The analyses showed that the factor structure of the NSS remained generally stable and that the ability of the NSS to discriminate between different subjects at different universities actually improved over the ten-year sample period. The best predictors of overall satisfaction were ‘Teaching Quality’ and ‘Organisation & Management’, with ‘Assessment & Feedback’ having relatively weak predictive ability, despite the sector’s tangible efforts to improve on this metric. The tripling of student fees in 2012 for English students (but not the rest of the UK) was used as a ‘natural experiment’ to investigate the sensitivity of student satisfaction ratings to the real economic costs of HE. The tuition fee increase had no identifiable negative effect, with student satisfaction steadily improving throughout the decade. Although the NSS was never designed to measure perceived value-for-money, its insensitivity to major changes in the economic costs of HE to the individual suggest that the conventional concept of student satisfaction is incomplete. As such we propose that the concept of student satisfaction: (i) needs to be widened to take into account the broader economic benefits to the individual student by including measures of perceived value-for-money and (ii) should measure students’ level of satisfaction in the years post-graduation, by which time they may have a greater appreciation of the value of their degree in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were conducted to determine the relative impact of direct and indirect (ad hominem) attacks on science claims. Four hundred and thirty-nine college students (Experiment 1) and 199 adults (Experiment 2) read a series of science claims and indicated their attitudes towards those claims. Each claim was paired with one of the following: A) a direct attack upon the empirical basis of the science claim B) an ad hominem attack on the scientist who made the claim or C) both. Results indicate that ad hominem attacks may have the same degree of impact as attacks on the empirical basis of the science claims, and that allegations of conflict of interest may be just as influential as allegations of outright fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the factors that determine academic performance is an essential part of educational research. Existing research indicates that class attendance is a useful predictor of subsequent course achievements. The majority of the literature is, however, based on surveys and self-reports, methods which have well-known systematic biases that lead to limitations on conclusions and generalizability as well as being costly to implement. Here we propose a novel method for measuring class attendance that overcomes these limitations by using location and bluetooth data collected from smartphone sensors. Based on measured attendance data of nearly 1,000 undergraduate students, we demonstrate that early and consistent class attendance strongly correlates with academic performance. In addition, our novel dataset allows us to determine that attendance among social peers was substantially correlated (>0.5), suggesting either an important peer effect or homophily with respect to attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research problem: The purpose of the study was to fill gaps in our knowledge about technical editors’ work practices and perceptions, knowledge that might be useful for teachers and practitioners, as well as current and prospective students. Research questions: (1) What work activities do technical editors engage in? (2) How do people become and progress in careers as technical editors? (3) What do technical editors perceive about the complexity of their work and its value to themselves and others? Literature review: The literature review focuses on previous surveys of technical editors, which have tended to focus on technology-related issues and been largely limited to samples obtained from the Society for Technical Communication. Methodology: A link to an online survey was sent to 32 professional organizations for technical and other professional, nonliterary, and nonjournalism editors. The leadership of each organization was asked to forward the link to its members; 12 complied, with a resulting 253 respondents. Responses to closed-ended questions were tabulated, while responses to the open-ended questions were analyzed thematically. Results and conclusions: The results revealed a broad range of job titles, disciplinary and professional fields, genres and media, editing-related tasks, and extent and type of collaboration. Respondents perceived as useful several forms of academic preparation, personality traits, and attitudes. About half the respondents had become editors through deliberate preparation during college (direct route) and half had not (indirect route). Thus, one implication of the results is that college students majoring in the sciences and other technical fields (indirect route) might be attracted to complementary minors and certificate programs in technical communication/editing. The sample was obtained from among a broader range of technical editors than samples used in previous surveys but was relatively small and, therefore, nongeneralizable. Future surveys should strive for a larger sample size and include questions about a wide range of demographic variables that can be correlated with the independent variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks play an important role in our daily lives. However, social ties are rather elusive to quantify, especially for large groups of subjects over prolonged periods of time. In this work, we first propose a methodology for extracting social ties from long spatio-temporal data streams, where the subjects are 17,795 undergraduates from a university of China and the data streams are the 9,147,106 time-stamped RFID check-in records left behind by them during one academic year. By several metrics mentioned below, we then analyze the structure of the social network. Our results center around three main observations. First, we characterize the global structure of the network, and we confirm the small-world phenomenon on a global scale. Second, we find that the network shows clear community structure. And we observe that younger students at lower levels tend to form large communities, while students at higher levels mostly form smaller communities. Third, we characterize the assortativity patterns by studying the basic demographic and network properties of users. We observe clear degree assortativity on a global scale. Furthermore, we find a strong effect of grade and school on tie formation preference, but we do not find any strong region homophily. Our research may help us to elucidate the structural characteristics and the preference of the formation of social ties in college students’ social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health literacy (HL) has become an important public health issue and is receiving growing attention. However, the HL levels of military college students in China have never been analyzed. This study aimed to investigate the HL and related associate factors in military college students in Chongqing, China. Data was obtained with the “Chinese Citizen Health Literacy Questionnaire (2012 edition)” from 3183 military college students aged 16–28 years at Chongqing in December 2015. A total score of ≥80 points determined adequate HL, and HL level was defined as the proportion of students who had adequate HL out of the total number of participants. Multiple logistic regression analysis with a stepwise forward likelihood ratio (LR) method was used to determine the effects of sociodemographic characteristics, health-related behaviors, and family-related factors on HL level. The mean score of HL was 68.56, and the HL level of military college students was 21.05%; the overall knowledge rate was 71.33%. The independent factors that were associated with HL level were years in college, educational system, time playing online games, annual household income and father's education level. Senior (odds ratio [OR] = 1.229, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.018∼1.484), undergraduate (OR = 1.509, 95% CI 1.151∼1.978), time played games more than 5 hours each week (OR = 0.638, 95% CI 0.486∼0.837), annual household incomes more than 50,000 yuan (OR = 1.231, 95% CI 1.027∼1.476) and father's education level (high school: OR = 2.327, 95% CI 1.186∼4.565; university: OR = 2.450, 95% CI 1.244∼4.825), were independently associated with higher HL level. HL levels of military college students in Chongqing need to be improved across the board. Our data suggests that special emphasis should be placed on students in junior and those in the specialist educational system. School departments may also benefit from incorporating health literacy into their curricula and helping students manage the time they spend playing online games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use complex network theory to study the differences between the friendship concepts in elementary school and university students. Four friendship networks were identified from surveys. Three of these networks are from elementary schools; two are located in the rural area of Yucatán and the other is in the urban area of Mérida, Yucatán. We analyzed the structure and the communities of these friendship networks and found significant differences among those at the elementary schools compared with those at the university. In elementary schools, the students make friends mainly in the same classroom, but there are also links among different classrooms because of the presence of siblings and relatives in the schools. These kinds of links (sibling-friend or relative-friend) are called, in this work, “mixed links”. The classification of the communities is based on their similarity with the classroom composition. If the community is composed principally of students in different classrooms, the community is classified as heterogeneous. These kinds of communities appear in the elementary school friendship networks mainly because of the presence of relatives and siblings. Once the links between siblings and relatives are removed, the communities resembled the classroom composition. On the other hand, the university students are more selective in choosing friends and therefore, even when they have friends in the same classroom, those communities are quite different to the classroom composition. Also, in the university network, we found heterogeneous communities even when the presence of sibling and relatives is negligible. These differences made up a topological structure quite different at different academic levels. We also found differences in the network characteristics. Once these differences are understood, the topological structure of the friendship network and the communities shaped in an elementary school could be predicted if we know the total number of students and the ties between siblings and relatives. However, at the university, we cannot do the same. This discovery implies that friendship is a dynamic concept that produces several changes in the friendship network structure and the way that people make groups of friends; it provides the opportunity to give analytic support to observational studies. Communities were also studied by gender and we found that when the links among relatives and siblings were removed, the number of communities formed by one gender alone increased. At the university, many communities formed by students of the same gender were also found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to analyze changes in the predictors of physical activity behavior among college students. The Theory of Planned Behavior served as its theoretical framework. Methods: Among an initial sample of 417 college students, 195 participants completed a validated questionnaire measuring attitudes, subjective norms, perceived control, intentions and self-reported physical activity, at the beginning and end of each of 3 college semesters. Latent growth curve modeling analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between the trajectories of changes in PA, intentions, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control. Results: Good fit indices supported the validity of the proposed longitudinal model (CFI > .97, RMSEA < .05). Changes in perceived control (γ = 0.57) were significantly linked with changes in intentions (p < .05). Perceived control (γ = 0.28) and intention growth (γ = 0.36) predicted behavior changes (p < .05). No gender differences were observed on attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control (p > .10). However, girls tend to have higher growth parameters on intentions and physical activity (p < .05). In summary, intentions and physical activity has significantly increased over 3 college semesters (growth parameters significant at p < .05). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that attitudes and perceived control are key determinants regarding the intentions of being active. On a longer term perspective, future physical activity interventions should focus on the enhancement of students’ perceived control. Such educational context should help in promoting the adoption of an active lifestyle during college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Depression is a major health concern for college students due to its substantial morbidity and mortality. Although low parental education has been identified as a factor in depression in college students, the mechanisms through which parental educational achievement affects students’ depression are not well understood. We tested whether adverse family and college environments mediate the relationship between parental educational level and depression among Chinese college students. Methods: A total of 5180 respondents were selected using a cross-sectional survey. We examined the association of parental education, adverse family and college environments with depression in college students using the Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Checklist, Beck Depression Inventory and socio-demographic questionnaires. Results: Lower parental educational level is significantly correlated with depression in college students in our sample. Additionally, low family economic status, paternal or maternal unemployment, long periods spent apart from family, family conflicts, having been scolded and beaten by parents, poor or dissatisfying test performance, conflict with friends, heavy course load and failure in selection processes are also associated with parental education. Low family economic status, paternal or maternal unemployment, long periods spent apart from family, family conflicts, poor or dissatisfying test performance, conflict with friends and heavy course load mediated the relationship between parental education and depression in college students. Conclusions: Adverse family and college environments could explain the influence of parental educational level on depression in college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]