Despite very high rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) in autistic adults, the key psychosocial drivers of this phenomenon remain unknown. To investigate, we examined how lifetime stressor exposure and severity, which have been found to predict STB in non-autistic populations, related to STB in a multinational dataset of 226 autistic…

The psychological contract shapes people's perceptions and behaviours in the workplace through how people perceive and react to feedback from their environment. Little research has been carried out on the psychological contracts of university professional staff and this oversight is particularly problematic due to the impact that the psychological…

COVID-19 changed university life worldwide as campuses closed or offered restricted inperson teaching. Whilst early evidence suggests that educational experiences were satisfactory, concerns were raised about the impact of COVID-19 on social and psychological elements of university including student loneliness. We conducted a UK-wide…

Autistic individuals have reported lower satisfaction in their romantic relationships compared to non-autistic individuals. Previous research on the factors that contribute to relationship satisfaction within autism has focused on the characteristics of autistic participants as barriers to relationship satisfaction, while overlooking the role of…

The aims explored associations between stress ratings and influences on coping and personality on student course satisfaction and anxiety. Most research construes stress as distress, with little attempt to consider positive 'eustress' experiences. Undergraduate students (N = 162) were surveyed on student and pandemic-related stressors,…

Whilst student engagement with learning has been consistently linked to positive academic outcomes, there has been an increasing focus among higher education institutions on the importance of producing employable graduates. This study investigated whether individual differences in socially aversive personality traits predict different types of…

Experiences of bullying predict the development of paranoia in school-age adolescents. While many instances of psychotic phenomena are transitory, maintained victimization can lead to increasingly distressing paranoid thinking. Furthermore, paranoid thinkers perceive threat in neutral social stimuli and are vigilant for environmental risk. The…

Student engagement is a key prognosticator of success, retention and perseverance in higher education. This study used structural equation modelling to evaluate a gain cycle of future time perspective (FTP), positive emotion and student engagement, derived from the broaden-and-build theory (BBT). A further objective was to examine changes within…

Purpose: Children with poor language tend to have worse psychosocial outcomes compared to their typically developing peers. The most common explanations for such adversities focus on developmental psychological processes whereby poor language triggers psychosocial difficulties. Here, we investigate the possibility of shared biological effects by…

In view of recent changes in the higher education sector, such as increased tuition fees, a greater focus has been placed on widening participation initiatives and monitoring student satisfaction. The aims of the current study were twofold: (1) to explore whether pre-entry programmes foster successful transition to higher education, and (2) to…

This study hypothesised that academic resourcefulness and coping strategies would predict doubting amongst university undergraduates. Doubting refers to the serious consideration of prematurely withdrawing from university. It was predicted that mature students would report higher levels of academic resourcefulness and adaptive coping strategies,…

Based on a one-year longitudinal experimental study with 3,782 kindergarten school children across 15 countries, this article examines the association between prayer and happiness. Results show that the post-test scores on the faces scale were higher for the participant group who had taken the prayer lessons vis-à-vis the comparison group.…

Do pupils who use Accelerated Reader (AR) think differently about reading, do they enjoy reading more and do they do it more often than pupils who do not use AR? We explore this question using two sources of data. The first utilises data from our 2014 annual literacy survey in which more than 32,000 children and young people aged 8 to 18…

This article examined levels of stress and associated coping strategies among UK academics. Adopting a positive psychology approach, the influence of the character strengths of hope, optimism, gratitude and self-efficacy on stress, subjective well-being (SWB), and mental health was examined in 216 academics in a UK university. The study explored…

As a way to raise attainment, schools are encouraged to form ability groups across classes for particular subjects. There is limited evidence however about the relationship between setting and primary school children's characteristics and how teachers perceive them. The aim of this study was to investigate associations between set positioning for…