We investigated the relationship of school adjustment and social support with the mental health of mainland Chinese college students studying in Hong Kong. During the spring semester in 2011, 384 mainland Chinese college students across the postsecondary institutions in Hong Kong completed a questionnaire. Results showed that better school adjustment and higher perceived social support had significant positive relationships with the mental health of the mainland Chinese college students, while stress had a negative relationship with their mental health. Social support also acted as a moderator to the relationship between school adjustment and mental health.

Objectives: There is limited research on the meaning in life among Chinese elders. This study aims to examine the association among functional disabilities, meaning in life, social network, and quality of life in community-dwelling Chinese elders with low socioeconomic status. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 339 poor community-dwelling Chinese elders aged 60 and above. Results: The results showed that meaning in life and social network were significantly related to quality of life. Moreover, social network was a mediator to the relationship between functional disability and quality of life, and meaning in life was a partial mediator to the relationship between social network and quality of life. Conclusion: Workshops should be organized by the elderly service providers for Chinese elders facing deterioration in health and activity levels to learn to live intentionally and purposefully. A social network among elders should also be fostered in the community.

Background: Previous studies have found that traditional positive Chinese beliefs contribute to the maintenance of the quality of life. It is interesting to explore the functions of positive thinking on stress in the Chinese context in order to test whether positive thinking influences the psychological well-being of college students.Objective: This study aims to examine the associations between positive thinking, school adjustment, and the psychological well-being of Chinese college-going students. It investigates the moderating role of positive thinking in the effects of poor school adjustment on stress and well-being.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was administered to 299 male and 396 female college students aged 17-28 years across eight universities of Hong Kong.Results: Results confirmed that school adjustment was negatively related to stress (β= -.194) and positively related to life satisfaction (β= .074). It was also indirectly related to psychological distress via stress (β= -.194;β= .620). Moreover, positive thinking was a moderator to the relationships between school adjustment and stress (β= .011) and to the relationships between school adjustment and life satisfaction (β= -.009). School adjustment was more related to stress at higher levels of positive thinking while it was more related to life satisfaction at lower levels of positive thinking.Conclusion: These results suggested that enhancing positive thinking is beneficial to Chinese college-going students’ psychological well-being. Therefore, student services at universities can consider organizing workshops to educate and promote the appropriate use of positive thinking for students to alleviate their stress and enhance their psychological well-being.

There is a lack of research directly examining the relationships between future orientation, individualism, prosocial engagement and identity status among Chinese youth. This study focuses on the moderating role of identity status in the relationship between individualistic values, future orientation and prosocial behaviours. The study sample consists of 1817 Chinese youth aged between 15 and 28. Six patterns of identity statuses were identified by a hierarchical cluster analysis. Path analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between the independent variables and youths’ prosocial engagement and the moderating effects of identity status. The results showed that future orientation is significantly related to prosocial engagement, while individualistic value is not significantly associated with it. The interaction of future orientation and identity status significantly affects prosocial engagement. The effect of future orientation is greater for those in searching moratorium and carefree diffusion and lower for those in achievement and foreclosure. These imply that time perspective intervention may facilitate the prosocial engagement of students who lack a mature and committed identity.