Repositório RCAAP

Children and adolescents living in residential childcare have a higher prevalence of mental health problems as a result of a history of adverse childhood experiences. Therefore, this population should be a priority target for mental health preventive interventions. The current study analyses the effectiveness of the Wave by Wave surf therapy program, that combines surfing with a psychological group intervention, through a randomized controlled trial. Seventy-three youth (7-17 years) living in residential care participated in the study. Main mental health outcomes (adjustment problems, depression, anxiety, and wellbeing) and secondary outcomes (self-efficacy, self-regulation, sleep quality, physical activity, pro-social behavior, and social connectivity) were assessed at pre- and post-intervention. The results indicated a significant impact of the intervention on mental health outcomes reported by the key residential worker, with medium to large effect sizes. Specifically, after the intervention, there was a significant reduction in the total emotional and behavioural problems, and a significant increase of youth pro-social behaviour and quality of life that was not observed for the waiting list group. There were no significant effects on other measures reported by the children (e.g., depression and anxiety, self-esteem, emotion regulation, social connectedness, sleep quality, physical activity) and on executive functions measures. The Wave by Wave program seems to be an effective intervention to reduce behavior problems and to promote pro-social behavior in a high-risk sample. The absence of significant effects on other dimensions may indicate the need of some complementary support to address specific difficulties of this population.

This study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Portuguese version of a parental selfregulation measure: "Me as a Parent"(MaaP). A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with an online convenience sample of 370 mothers of children aged between 3 and 15 (M = 9, SD = 3.74). Results showed that in this sample, the original structure of the MaaP was not confirmed. The revised model with three first-order factors showed good fit indices, χ2 = 202.37, p < .001, χ2/df = 101, CFI = .92, TLI = .91; SRMR = .05, RMSEA = .05, 90% CI = [0.046, 0.063]. The factors of MaaP showed good internal consistency, except for Personal Agency. The instrument achieved discriminant validity and showed good test-retest reliability. Although the MaaP seems to be a promising measure, the present results show that more research is needed to validate this new scale.

Este artigo apresenta o estudo de validação das versões portuguesas da Escala de Gosto pela Escola e Evitamento Escolar (SLAQ) para a crianças e para pais. Esta escala pretende avaliar o grau em que a criança gosta e evita a escola, na perspetiva da mesma e dos pais. A amostra é constituída por 394 alunos, do 2º ao 4º ano de escolaridade e respetivos pais. Na versão para crianças, a análise fatorial confirmatória revela uma estrutura bifatorial (Gosto pela Escola e Evitamento Escolar) equivalente à versão original e uma elevada consistência interna. Na versão para pais, não se verificou um ajustamento adequado entre os dados e a estrutura bifatorial original. Da análise fatorial exploratória, surgiu um ajustamento mais adequado de um modelo tri-fatorial da versão para pais (Gosto pela Escola; Evitamento Escolar; Comunicação sobre a Escola), com níveis bons de consistência interna.

The present study aimed to explore Portuguese parents’ perspective about their experience and participation in the ACT-Raising Safe Kids Program (RSK), a universal parenting program to prevent child maltreatment. The sample consisted of 9 mothers and 1 father of 3 to 8 years old children who completed the ACT-RSK. Parental perspectives were assessed through a semi-structured face-to-face interview. Content analysis and descriptive statistic procedures were used to analyze the data. Findings indicate that parents chose to participate because they needed help to solve specific problems, wanted to improve parenting abilities and knowledge, and share experiences. As results of participating in the ACT-RSK, parents reported an increased awareness of parenting behaviors, an adjustment of expectations and acquisition of information. They also perceived increased emotional self-regulation, self-efficacy and use of positive parenting practices. These changes led to the enhancement of their child’s self-regulation and awareness of rules, and a reduction in behavior problems. Regarding the implementation of the ACT-RSK, parents valued the contents addressed and belonging to a group. However, they identified personal and program barriers, including competing demands on parent’s time and considering some sessions less useful. Implications of these findings are discussed and future research questions are addressed.

School affective engagement has been extensively studied due to its role in students’ adaptation and success. The present systematic review aims to examine the predictors and associated factors of school affective engagement in elementary school-age children (6-12 years old). This review examined empirical studies published between 1997 and 2017 selected on the basis of pre-defined criteria. Only eight studies were included in this review. The majority of the studies are quantitative and longitudinal presenting an adequate methodological quality. The results indicated a positive association between teacher-student support and student’s school affective engagement. However, other relational predictors were less studied, specifically, peers and family factors. Concerning individual factors, studies were also limited in scope, but research examining the role of children’s gender suggests that girls have higher levels of school positive affective engagement than boys. The scarcity of studies focused on predictors of school affective engagement during elementary school indicate that more studies on this topic are needed. Methodological constraints of the studies included are identified and suggestions for future research are made to further improve this area of research.

Family reunification is a complex process and is consensually considered the best solution for children in care, as soon as the family has changed the dysfunctional patterns that prevent child safety and well-being. Intervention throughout the entire process is crucial to the success of family reunification. This study aimed to explore and understand child protection professionals’ views on factors influencing (un)successful family reunification trajectories. Using a qualitative design, 33 Portuguese child protection professionals participated in five focus groups. The thematic analysis revealed a set of influential factors within three different systemic levels: child, family, and child welfare system. The latter level was clearly predominant, pointing to the powerful role of the intervention as a vehicle for successful family reunification. The results showed the relevance attributed by the professionals to some main intervention guidelines, children–professionals’ relationships, multisystemic assessment and intervention, coordinated work of intervention teams, and sufficient time between the court decision and the child’s re-entry into the family home. The need for early intervention and its continuity after the child’s reintegration into the home also emerged as relevant factors. This study provides in-depth knowledge of professionals’ views on the intervention process, thus contributing to a comprehensive understanding of (un)successful family reunification trajectories.

Este livro reúne sinopses de diversos trabalhos sobre educação inclusiva. No caso deste capítulo, trata-se deuma síntese da tese de doutoramento de Sofia Freire, orientada por Margarida César. Este trabalho analisa diversas práticas, desenvolvidas numa escola do ensino regular, do 1.º ciclo do ensino básico, que contribuem ou criam barreiras à inclusão de alunos Surdos e ao seu acesso ao sucesso escolar.

In the present study, the attributions of socially and economically disadvantaged mothers for their own negative parenting behavior and for their children’s undesirable behaviors as perceived by parents—understood as misbehavior—were analyzed. To this end, an exploratory study with a qualitative design was developed, in which 24 socially and economically disadvantaged mothers were individually interviewed. The data were analyzed following a thematic analysis approach, using software suited to qualitative analysis, namely NVIVO 12. The children’s undesirable behaviors as perceived by parents and some characteristics associated with parental performance (particularly the appraisal of the effectiveness of their negative practices) emerged respectively as external and internal factors, explaining mothers’ inadaptive behaviors—difficulties in behavior regulation, physical coercion, psychological control and paraverbal hostility. The parental subsystem and school emerged as the main external factors, and the psychological characteristics as the most relevant internal factors, explaining the children’s undesirable behaviors—challenge, immaturity, hostility, emotionally-based, school behavior/absenteeism and danger. The results also indicate weak self-critical reflexivity regarding some of the inadaptive behaviors. The comprehensive analysis of the results, based on the literature review, gave rise to an explanatory hypothesis on the dysfunctional circular process regarding the maintenance of inadaptive practices and children’s undesirable behaviors, considering the role played by parental attributions and by insufficient parental reflexivity.

The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Continuing Bonds Scale–16 (CBS-16) in a sample of Portuguese-speaking bereaved parents. The sample comprised 355 parents (mean age: 40.52 years) who completed the CBS16 as well as measures of grief and posttraumatic growth. The exploratory factor analysis suggested a two-factor structure (internalized and externalized continuing bonds), which was also supported through a confirmatory factor analysis. The CBS-16 presented satisfactory reliability, as well as construct, convergent, and known-groups validities. These results support the use of the CBS-16 as an adequate measure of continuing bonds among bereaved parents.

Objetivo: O presente estudo teve como objetivo avaliar as propriedades psicométricas da versão portuguesa da Escala do Medo da Felicidade. Este conceito é definido como o medo que tem subjacente a crença de que a felicidade traz consequências negativas. Método: Os participantes foram 323 estudantes universitários entre os 18 e os 54 anos de idade cujos dados foram recolhidos presencialmente (n = 118) e online (n = 205). Resultados: Os resultados da análise paralela e das análises fatoriais exploratória e confirmatória confirmaram a estrutura unidimensional da escala que demonstrou uma boa consistência interna. O medo da felicidade apresentou uma correlação negativa moderada com a satisfação com a vida, o afeto positivo e a esperança e uma correlação também moderada mas positiva com o afeto negativo. Através de uma análise de regressão linear hierárquica verificou-se que o medo da felicidade, controlando variáveis sociodemográficas e psicossociais, estava negativamente associado à satisfação com a vida. Conclusão: A versão portuguesa da Escala do Medo da Felicidade apresentou boas qualidades psicométricas. A disponibilização deste instrumento permitirá contribuir para os estudos sobre a felicidade, especificamente, como é que pode ser experienciada de uma forma negativa e, por vezes, evitada.

The current Spanish higher education landscape (characterized by evaluations, overcrowding of classrooms, commitment to internationalization) has social, employment, and health repercussions for Early Career Academics (ECAs). However, this group of academics is often described as passive subjects when it comes to challenging the current situation in higher education. In this study, we sought to understand the attitudes of resistance and criticism in ECAs by analyzing the activity (through NodeXL) and content (through Nvivo12) of the Twitter accounts of two Spanish ECA associations. Twitter (now X) was selected since social media has emerged as a new form of social empowerment and democratization. It is concluded that there are attitudes of resistance among the accounts analyzed. However, for ECAs, criticism of the evaluation system and emphasis on scientific production is relegated to the background, with criticism of their working conditions taking priority. Finally, we highlight the significant and impactful role of associations in social and political struggles.

In line with this year’s conference theme, “The future is now: The changing world of work,” this symposium focuses on studies or approaches that guide practitioners in their interventions to align them with decent work contexts. Ensuring decent work contexts is an essential prerequisite for respecting human rights and, therefore, a relevant contribution to ensuring that changes in the world of work do not adversely affect life at work and beyond. The symposium focuses on the relationship between decent work and well-being in work contexts in four countries.

A parental child-centered feeding approach is likely to keep children’s biological mechanisms activated while eating, protecting them in an obesogenic context. However, few feeding practice measures assess parents’ behaviors to guide and prompt children to identify and respond appropriately to their signs of hunger and satiety. We aimed to develop and study the reliability, validity, and measurement invariance of a new scale to assess parental feeding practices to promote children’s self-regulation of food intake. To pursue this aim, we conducted two descriptive, crosssectional, online studies in Portugal in an online format; a total of 536 parents of 2- to 6-year-old children completed the evaluation protocol. Factorial analysis findings support the theoretical organization proposed for the scale. The confirmatory factorial analysis supported a first-order factor structure with two subscales, Prompting for eating self-regulation and Teaching about eating consequences, with eight items in total. Both scales presented good internal consistency and adequate temporal stability, with a significant, positive, and moderate relationship. The results showed metric invariance for the child’s sex. Both types of practices were positively correlated with the child’s enjoyment of food. Prompting for eating self-regulation showed negative associations with parents’ emotional lack of control, children’s satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, and fussiness. Preliminary studies confirmed both the validity and reliability of the instrument and the adequacy of adopting a self-regulatory approach when assessing child-centered feeding practices. Combining this instrument with others that assess coercive practices can be beneficial to capture ineffective parents’ behaviors on children’s eating self-regulation.

Purpose: Parents’ underestimation of young children’s weight can reduce their engagement and readiness to implement changes in children’s diet and physical activity. Childcare teachers can support parents’ identification of children at risk for being overweight only if they can accurately do this themselves. Design: Quantitative, cross-sectional study. Setting: Fifteen kindergartens near Lisbon, Portugal. Subjects: 319 parents, 32 teachers (47.5% and 100% response rate, respectively), and 319 children. Measures: Caregivers classified the children's weight, considering their height and age as underweight, healthy weight, or overweight; children’s body mass index (BMI) status for age and sex was assessed. Analysis: Differences in caregivers’ accuracy of children’s weight perception were assessed. Multilevel multivariate logistic regression models were used to analyze the predictors of the accuracy of teachers’ and parents’ weight perception as a binary outcome. Results: The proportion of children with overweight correctly assessed differed significantly (P = .004) between teachers (31.1%) and parents (17.5%). The child’s BMI percentile was the only significant positive predictor for both caregivers’ weight perception accuracy (P < .001 and P = .004, for parents and teachers respectively), holding the child’s age and sex constant. Conclusion: Although childcare teachers were better raters than parents when evaluating children’s weight status, the percentage of children with overweight that childcare teachers misclassified was still relatively high.

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Esta investigação visa compreender e enquadrar as perturbações do eixo II (DSM-IV), à luz de uma polaridade dimensional no desenvolvimento da personalidade - o relacionamento (dependência) versus a auto-definição (auto-criticismo) - proposta por Sidney Blatt (1990, 2008), em mulheres na idade adulta avançada, autónomas e inseridas na comunidade. Participaram 102 mulheres (M = 72,07 anos de idade, DP = 7,04). Os instrumentos de avaliação utilizados foram a versão Portuguesa (Henriques-Calado & Duarte-Silva, 2009) do Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ-4+; Hyler, 1994), e a versão Portuguesa (Campos, 2000, 2009) do Questionário de Experiências Depressivas (Blatt, D’Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976, 1979). As escalas de perturbação da personalidade histriónica (β = 0,34), dependente (β = 0,26), e obsessivo-compulsiva (β = 0,39) associam-se significativamente com o relacionamento (escala de dependência do QED), explicando 50% da variância, e as escalas de perturbação da personalidade narcísica (β = 0,34), borderline (β = 0,25), e evitante (β = 0,29) associam-se significativamente com a dimensão da auto-definição (escala de auto-criticismo do QED), explicando 63% da variância. Os resultados são consistentes e estão de acordo com as conceptualizações teóricas que na atualidade alargam o campo da psicopatologia, valorizando uma abordagem de cariz interpessoal e dimensional da personalidade.

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O objectivo do presente estudo foi a análise dos efeitos principais e da interacção das variáveis idade e autococneito na disrupção escolar professada pelos jovens.

This paper draws upon a broader piece of research on assessment in higher education, particularly focusing on issues regarding the fairness and effectiveness of the assessment methods and their implications for the learning process. The perceptions of undergraduate students are analysed taking into account the effectiveness and fairness of both traditional and learner-centred assessment methods, as well their influence on the learning process. In total, 624 students participated in this study in five Portuguese Public Universities in different areas of knowledge and programmes. Data were collected through questionnaires. Findings suggest that assessment is seen as more effective and fairer when it is done through the use of learnercentred assessment methods rather than by traditional assessment (e.g. written tests or exams). The students also claim that they devote more time to study when assessment is performed through learnercentred assessment methods than by traditional ones. The most used assessment methods are written tests and oral presentations in group. However, differences in the programmes were identified as well as differences according to gender. Implications of the findings for assessment and for the teaching and learning process are discussed.

A Tiroidite de Hashimoto (HT) é uma doença crónica de natureza autoimune, caracterizada pela infiltração celular linfoide na glândula tiroideia, com subsequente atrofia gradual da tiroide e pela presença dos anticorpos. Como consequência, esta condição conduz ao desenvolvimento do hipotiroidismo, distúrbio marcado por uma atividade metabólica reduzida nos vários tecidos do organismo. A HT é considerada a doença autoimune mais comum, com uma prevalência mundial de 10 a 20% e tem vindo a revelar-se um problema de saúde publica a nível global. A presença de sintomas na HT está diretamente associada à evolução do hipotiroidismo e são bastante inespecíficos, tornando-os difíceis de identificar, visto que também se assemelham às manifestações normais do envelhecimento. A Hashimoto é uma doença multifatorial e complexa no que diz respeito à sua etiologia, para a qual contribuem fatores genéticos, ambientais e existenciais, que juntos promovem o processo autoimune. As evidências mais recentes sugerem que as alterações da microbiota intestinal desempenham um papel fundamental no desenvolvimento e progresso da HT e que a disbiose intestinal, o supercrescimento bacteriano e o aumento da permeabilidade intestinal favorecem o desenvolvimento desta doença autoimune. Paralelamente, vários artigos recentes mostram que os oxidantes estão aumentados e os antioxidantes diminuídos nos pacientes com Hashimoto, em comparação com indivíduos saudáveis. Além do tratamento farmacológico, vários artigos sugerem que a Tiroidite de Hashimoto deve ser complementada com mudanças nos hábitos alimentares, e uma vez que, os défices nutricionais são comuns em pacientes com HT, o controlo nutricional é considerado essencial para a gestão desta doença. A dietoterapia para a Tiroidite de Hashimoto é focada na modulação do sistema imunológico através de uma dieta anti-inflamatória. De acordo com o conhecimento atual, o padrão de dieta mediterrânica é o mais benéfico para pacientes com HT, pois possui um efeito protetor devido às suas propriedades antioxidantes.