Sinval, Jorge

Background Depression, anxiety, and stress (DAS) have been linked to poor academic outcomes. This study explores the relationships among DAS, academic engagement, dropout intentions, and academic performance — measured by Grade Point Average (GPA) — in medical students. It aims to understand how these factors relate to each other and predict academic performance.

Background Family resilience refers to a family's capacity to face and manage adversities, emerging as a stronger and more resourceful unit. A family system approach enlarges the lens to the broad relational network, identifying potential resources for resilience within the immediate and extended family. This approach emphasizes a family's innate ability to adapt in the face of adversities.

Objective
This study aims to test the psychometric properties of the Walsh Family Resilience Questionnaire (WFRQ) using a sample of Portuguese caregivers with children aged between 10 and 15 years.

Method
A total of 267 caregivers of children aged 10 to 15 years completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and the WFRQ. Analyses were performed to evaluate the WFRQ's validity evidence based on the internal structure (i.e., dimensionality and reliability) and on its relationship to other variables.

Results
The findings supported a 31-item version of the WFRQ with one third-order latent factor, three second-order factors, and nine first-order factors for the Portuguese population. The WFRQ exhibited satisfactory validity evidence based on the internal structure and relation to other variables.

Conclusion
Overall, the results of this study demonstrate the suitability of the WFRQ as a holistic measure to gauge resilience at the family level, going beyond individual assessments.

Implications
This instrument holds significant utility in family resilience research and clinical interventions involving families.

Background Burnout is a pervasive issue among medical students, exhibiting a high prevalence that jeopardizes their academic success and may also predispose them to more severe affective disorders such as depression. This study aims to explore the complex relationships between psychological capital (PsyCap), general social support, educational satisfaction, and burnout, and how these factors collectively influence dropout intentions.

Methods
A non-probabilistic convenience sample was collected through an online survey from first- and second-year medical students at a Faculty of Medicine in Portugal. The survey employed psychometric instruments to measure burnout (BAT-12), social support (F-SozU K-6), PsyCap (CPC-12R), satisfaction with education, and dropout intentions (Screening Instrument for Students At-Risk of Dropping Out). Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the data from 351 participants.

Results
The model demonstrated a significant positive association between burnout and dropout intentions ( = 0.37; p < 0.001), underscoring burnout as a direct correlate of dropout intentions alongside educational satisfaction ( = −0.25; p = 0.003) and PsyCap ( = −0.22; p = 0.005). Higher social support is associated with reduced burnout ( = −0.28; p < 0.001) and increased educational satisfaction ( = 0.22; p = 0.002).

Limitations
The non-probabilistic sampling method prevents the generalization of the findings. The cross-sectional data do not permit the inference of temporal relationships between the studied variables.

Conclusions
These findings emphasize the importance that burnout may have on dropout intentions, and contribute to the understanding of affective syndromes such as burnout in educational settings.

This chapter delves into the interplay between family, socioeconomic status (SES) and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), and educational outcomes in reading literacy, highlighting the importance of high-quality early education. In previous studies, SES, encompassing economic and social indicators like parental income, education, occupation, and the availability of educational resources, is recognized as a pivotal factor shaping a child's educational journey. Further previous studies have also highlighted the importance of high-quality early education on children’s later educational outcome. Using data from the PIRLS 2021 (The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and PISA 2018 (Programme for International Student Assessment), this research investigates the effect of early childhood education on reading literacy achievement among 4th graders and 15-year-old students around the world. Further, we also investigated if the ECEC and SES effects on reading literacy at later ages is conditional on countries' human development. Here we use the human development index by UNESCO. According to the results, there was a clear variation between the effects of early childhood education and care on later reading literacy outcome in the measured countries around the world. These differences in the effect underscores the importance of rethinking policies and practices, especially in those countries where the effect of early education seemed to be negative. There were also statistically significant interactions between ECEC duration and ESCS when estimating reading literacy by regression on the plausible values for reading literacy for both PIRLS and PISA. This interaction was dependent on the human development index. The findings of this study are essential for policymakers as they highlight the nuanced relationship between early education, socioeconomic status, and human development across different age groups and regions.