Children’s and Mothers’ Achievement Goal Orientations and Self-Efficacy: Dyadic Contributions to Students’ Well-Being

Starting from the basic idea that identifying predictive family factors for children’s well-being is among the levels of the psychology of sustainable human development, our study aimed to investigate the impact of mothers’ achievement goal orientations and parental self-efficacy on their children’s academic well-being, considering children’s own achievement goals as a mediator variable. The entire sample comprised 350 participants: 175 children (42.86% boys) and their respective mothers. Children were enrolled in the 4th grade (n = 85; Mage = 10.44, SD = 0.49), in the 8th grade (n = 62; Mage = 14.45, SD = 0.53), and in the 12th grade (n = 28; Mage = 18.39, SD = 0.62). The results indicated that mothers’ motivational orientations had a strong effect on their children’s corresponding motivational orientations. Mothers’ achievement goal orientations and parental self-efficacy had significant effects on children’s well-being, mediated by children’s goal orientations. Children’s well-being was positively predicted by mothers’ mastery and performance-approach goal orientations, with variations between age groups. The importance of the parental motivational orientations in the development of the children’s corresponding orientations and well-being suggests that changing academic adaptation might be possible by operating early interventions at the parents’ level. Further research is necessary to explore why performance-approach goals had a positive impact on well-being in this cultural context, as previous studies revealed that this type of goal orientation may be detrimental to well-being

Coping with global uncertainty: Perceptions of COVID-19 psychological distress, relationship quality, and dyadic coping for romantic partners across 27 countries

Article first published online: August 26, 2021Following the global outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020, individuals report psychological distress associated with the “new normal”—social distancing, financial hardships, and increased responsibilities while working from home. Given the interpersonal nature of stress and coping responses between romantic partners, based on the systemic transactional model this study posits that perceived partner dyadic coping may be an important moderator between experiences of COVID-19 psychological distress and relationship quality. To examine these associations, self-report data from 14,020 people across 27 countries were collected during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–July, 2020). It was hypothesized that higher symptoms of psychological distress would be reported post-COVID-19 compared to pre-COVID-19 restrictions (Hypothesis 1), reports of post-COVID-19 psychological distress would be negatively associated with relationship quality (Hypothesis 2), and perceived partner DC would moderate these associations (Hypothesis 3). While hypotheses were generally supported, results also showed interesting between-country variability. Limitations and future directions are presented