Vill du förstå de unika utmaningarna och möjligheterna för människor och företag på Sveriges landsbygd? Lika välfärd för alla erbjuder en spännande och aktuell inblick i de villkor som finns och hur vi kan skapa bättre förutsättningar för att leva och verka på landsbygden. En hållbar utveckling i hela Sverige förutsätter att alla delar av lande...[Bokinfo] 

Vill du förstå de unika utmaningarna och möjligheterna för människor och företag på Sveriges landsbygd? Lika välfärd för alla erbjuder en spännande och aktuell inblick i de villkor som finns och hur vi kan skapa bättre förutsättningar för att leva och verka på landsbygden. En hållbar utveckling i hela Sverige förutsätter att alla delar av lande...[Bokinfo] 

Vill du förstå de unika utmaningarna och möjligheterna för människor och företag på Sveriges landsbygd? Lika välfärd för alla erbjuder en spännande och aktuell inblick i de villkor som finns och hur vi kan skapa bättre förutsättningar för att leva och verka på landsbygden. En hållbar utveckling i hela Sverige förutsätter att alla delar av lande...[Bokinfo] 

Vill du förstå de unika utmaningarna och möjligheterna för människor och företag på Sveriges landsbygd? Lika välfärd för alla erbjuder en spännande och aktuell inblick i de villkor som finns och hur vi kan skapa bättre förutsättningar för att leva och verka på landsbygden. En hållbar utveckling i hela Sverige förutsätter att alla delar av lande...[Bokinfo] 

Research suggests that adolescents often perceive parental behaviors—such as expressions of warmth and affection—differently than their parents do. These parent–adolescent discrepancies offer meaningful insight into family functioning during adolescence and adolescent mental health, though existing findings remain mixed. Grounded in interpersonal acceptance–rejection theory (IPARTheory), this study investigates longitudinal, bidirectional associations between parent–adolescent discrepancies in perceived parental warmth and adolescent internalizing symptoms. The sample included 1219 parent–adolescent dyads (both mothers and fathers) from 12 cultural groups across 9countries, followed across three time points spanning 5 years, with children's mean age being 10.72 years (SD = 0.67) at Wave 1, 13.19 years (SD = 0.90) at Wave 2, and 15.60 years (SD = 0.94) at Wave 3. The results of latent congruence models showed that mothers reported higher warmth than adolescents, whereas no significant discrepancies emerged between fathers and adolescents. The cross-sectional analyses indicated that a higher parent–adolescent discrepancy in parental warmth perceptions was linked to increased internalizing symptoms in adolescents and lower overall warmth perceived by parents and adolescents in the dyad. However, over the long term, marginal effects were observed only between greater internalizing symptoms in adolescents and lower overall warmth experienced, and vice versa. Additionally, some cross-cultural differences in the discrepancies between parents and adolescents were identified. These findings highlight the importance of congruence between parents' and adolescents' perceptions of parental warmth, which may play a critical role in reducing adolescent internalizing symptoms, at least in the short term. Future research should deepen these dynamics across different cultures and developmental stages to improve intervention strategies and strengthen family-based mental health support.

The benefits of physical activity (PA) for well-being are well known; however, studies examining longitudinal effects across diverse international samples in late adolescence are limited. This study advances prior work by combining a partial longitudinal design with a multinational sample to assess the predictive effect of PA on biennial change in older adolescents’ well-being, while testing for sex differences. The sample included 903 adolescents (50.4% female) from nine countries, who completed The European Health and Behavior Survey at age 16 and the EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Well-Being at ages 16 and 18. Multilevel modeling estimated the average impact of PA on change in well-being, controlling for baseline well-being. To further interrogate the findings, an additional analysis tested the effect using relative difference scores of well-being to provide a direct measure of simple change. Meta-analytic techniques then captured the degree of cross-country consistency in the estimated effect. Results indicated that more PA at age 16 significantly predicted greater EPOCH well-being at age 18, controlling for prior well-being at age 16, and that adolescent sex did not moderate this effect. The relative difference score analysis confirmed these results. The meta-analysis revealed no significant heterogeneity in the predictive effect across countries. Findings extend previous research by demonstrating the cross-cultural consistency of PA benefits during a critical developmental transition period. They suggest that PA is a modifiable behavior that can be utilized globally to enhance adolescent well-being, though individual differences and context-specific factors should be considered in public health policies and interventions. © 2025 Society for Research on Adolescence.

Primal world beliefs ("primals") capture individuals' basic understanding of what sort of world this is and are strongly associated with a wide range of behaviors and outcomes, yet we have little understanding of how primals come to be. This study used a data-driven machine learning approach to examine what individual, parenting, family, and cultural factors in childhood best predict young adults' beliefs that the world is Abundant, Alive, Enticing, Good, Hierarchical, Progressing, and Safe, contributing a long-term longitudinal perspective to the nascent work in developmental science on primal world beliefs ("primals").

Participants included 770 young adults from eight countries (Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, United States). During childhood, participants and parents reported on 76 factors available as potential predictors of primals. Factors at individual, parenting, family, and cultural levels all had some predictive value in relation to specific primals, but no single factor or cluster of factors was predictive of all primals. Developmental pathways to perceiving the world as Abundant, Alive, Enticing, Good, Hierarchical, Progressing, and Safe are not uniform. The current data-driven approach successfully unearthed several promising leads for developmentalists to probe in further research.

Primal world beliefs ("primals") capture understanding of general characteristics of the world, such as whether the world is Good and Enticing. Children (N = 1215, 50% girls), mothers, and fathers from Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and United States reported neighborhood danger, socioeconomic status, parental warmth, harsh parenting, psychological control, and autonomy granting from ages 8 to 16 years. At age 22 years, original child participants reported their primal world beliefs. Parental warmth during childhood and adolescence significantly predicted Good, Safe, and Enticing world beliefs, but other experiences were only weakly related to primals. We did not find that primals are strongly related to intuitive aspects of the materiality of childhood experiences, which suggests future directions for understanding the origins of primals.

The present study explored the bidirectional longitudinal associations between prosocial behavior and school performance during adolescence in six countries (Colombia, Italy, Jordan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States). A total sample of 884 adolescents (T1: Mage = 10.34 years, SD = 0.69) reported their prosocial behavior, while adolescents’ mothers (N = 871) and fathers (N = 773) reported their children’s school performance over three-time points covering the transition to adolescence (from ages 10 to 16).

A Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model, controlling for countries’ Human Development Index, child gender, and family SES, showed that adolescents with high levels of prosocial behavior also have high school performance on a stable basis over time. Moreover, being more prosocial than usual is positively associated with higher-than-expected school performance at each time point. The implications of the interplay between prosocial behavior and school performance during the transition to adolescence in multicultural contexts are discussed.

Previous research has suggested bidirectional relations between depressive symptoms and both internal and external core beliefs (self-esteem and optimism, respectively) in adolescence. However, little work has examined the cultural commonality versus specificity of these developmental pathways in adolescence across diverse contexts. To address this gap, the current study traced bidirectional associations among depressive symptoms and two forms of core beliefs (self-esteem and optimism) in adolescents from 12 cultural groups in nine countries. Longitudinal data were collected from 1,090 adolescents at ages 15 and 17.

Significant associations emerged between age 15 depressive symptoms and both age 17 core beliefs across all cultural groups except Sweden. No significant associations between age 15 core beliefs and age 17 depressive symptoms were found in the multigroup model. However, the pathways from core beliefs to depressive symptoms and from depressive symptoms to core beliefs did not significantly differ in strength. These findings provide cross-cultural evidence for the scar theory (depressive symptoms → core beliefs), but no clear support for the vulnerability theory (core beliefs → depressive symptoms), perhaps due to the measurement and stability of depression. These findings have implications for understanding the adolescent development of psychopathology and cognitions, such as core beliefs, across diverse cultures.