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RECENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Softcover Book
Project | 04
Hope, Optimism and Academic Performance
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Is being hopeful and optimistic more motivated in learning? Hope and optimism have been shown to predict academic motivation, but mixed finding is shown in the relationship between optimism and GPA. How about these relationships in Chinese culture?

 

My collaborators and I have investigated this relationship in a sample of HK university students. Our results found a significant correlation between internal hope and GPA, but not external-family hope nor optimism and GPA. This correlation is also not mediated by academic motivation.

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More details can be found in our papers:

  • Ge, J., Feldman, D. B., & Shu, T.-M. (2023). The relationships of hope, optimism, and academic motivation with GPA among university students in Hong Kong. Psychological Reports. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294123118414​

Project | 05
Negotiable Fate, Grit, Hope and Student Engagement
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of our lives, including teaching and learning. ​Being grit is not enough to keep our engagement in passing through all these obstacles. Negotiable fate, the belief that a person can negotiate with fate by exercising personal agency within the constraints (Chaturvedi, Chiu, Viswanathan, 2009), can maintain our perseverance of effort in motivation.

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My master student and I investigated how negotiable fate could mediate the relationship between grit and student engagement. We found that negotiable fate, by increasing the perception of personal agency within the social constriants, mediated this relationship only on the "perservance of effort" sub-factor of grit, but not on the "consistency of interest" sub-factor.

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More details can be found in our paper:

  • Yau, O. K. T., & Shu, T.-M. (2023). Why are students with a higher level of grit more engaging in learning? The mediation effect of negotiable fate on the grit-student engagement relationship in higher education during COVID-19. Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, 17, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/18344909231171728 

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Students with Digital Tablets
Project | 06
Negotiable Fate, Loneliness and Health in College Students (On-going)
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Loneliness (social isolation) is increasingly being recognised as a priority public health problem by WHO and is found to be associated with many health problems, e.g., sleep problems.  

Zawadzki, Graham, and Gerin (2013) has demonstrated that rumination mediates the relationship between loneliness and sleep quality in college students. This on-going study aims to investigate the relationships among several psychological variables, including Negotiable Fate, Hope, Rumination, Sleep etc. We hope to understand if certain beliefs would moderate the relationship between loneliness (or rumination) and sleep.

 

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References:

  • Zawadzki, M. J., Graham, J. E., & Gerin, W. (2013). Rumination and anxiety mediate the effect of loneliness on depressed mood and sleep quality in college students. Health Psychology, 32(2), 212–222. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029007​

To see more or discuss possible work, check out my work or talk with me >>
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