The present study examined the effectiveness of a curriculum-embedded, asynchronously delivered gratitude intervention with a first-year college student sample. Hypotheses included that the gratitude intervention would lead to decreased levels of depression, anxiety, and stress and increased feelings of gratitude and psychological…

Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers had raised concerns about the mental health of youth worldwide. One response has been the development of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) designed to enhance well-being. This study, conducted at a Thai university, investigated the impact of an online positive psychology course…

The beginning of 2020 witnessed the dramatic spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected 210 countries, including Indonesia, by April 8. Amidst the mounting concerns and the lack of an immediate cure, Indonesia initiated Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB), which had a profound effect on students. This research examines the positive…

Hope has a powerful influence on individuals, especially those battling critical illness. The problem is the Make-A-Wish wish-granting experience was never designed to improve the health care of children being granted a wish; thus, hope was a mere by-product of the wish experience. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to…

Evidence generally supports a positive association between growth mindset and academic outcomes, even if the experimental evidence for growth mindset interventions is somewhat more tenuous. From an applied perspective, the concept of growth mindsets has grown in popularity with a proliferation of materials readily available to teachers and school…

Positive psychology interventions are widely used in primary and secondary education to enhance student engagement and well-being. When used in the higher education sector, interventions tend to be used in psychology, psychotherapy and mindfulness programmes with successful outcomes in terms of student engagement, learning and well-being. However,…

This mixed-methods study investigates whether and to what extent positive psychology constructs (classroom enjoyment, grit, and growth mindset) and Extramural English predict primary school students' willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC) both in the classroom (a fictitious but common setting for English communication among…

Inequality in college has both structural and psychological causes; these include the presence of self-defeating beliefs about the potential for growth and belonging. Such beliefs can be addressed through large-scale interventions in the college transition (Walton & Cohen, 2011; Walton et al., 2023) but are hard to measure. In our…

This study used a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the efficacy of the universal, school-based VIP-Makkerskap [VIP Partnership] programme. 1101 students in a test group and 734 students in a control group completed questionnaires one week (t1), ten weeks (t2), and six months (t3) after programme implementation. A one-way ANCOVA showed that at…

This paper addresses a validation study focusing on the process of adapting the EPOCH measure of adolescent well-being (Kern et al. in Psychol Assess 28(5):586-597. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000201, 2016) to the school context and translating it into German--resulting in the EPOCH-School model (EPOCH-S) with the corresponding measure EPOCH-G-S…

This study examined the relationship between coping strategies, dispositional optimism, academic burnout and academic performance using structural equation modelling. Data were collected from a sample of 532 Spanish undergraduate students. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires including the LOT-R to assess optimism, CSI for the…

Several studies have found that higher hope is associated with higher academic achievement. Although scholars have asserted that this association is the result of higher hope leading to an increased likelihood that students will engage success-oriented behaviors (e.g., participating in class, completing homework assignments), very little empirical…

Background: Edutainment has long been used as a strategy in health promotion and public health wellness interventions. In March 2019, a large US southeastern university hosted a multimodal theatrical production entitled From Colored to Black (FCTB). The play used a historical lens to broadly address social determinants of health such as…

Positive psychology and positive education aim to broaden the definition of prosperity and success to include well-being. This qualitative study sought to explore whether students in a school with a school-wide approach to positive education expressed different ideas about prosperity and success than students who have not received explicit…

Adolescence is a period of dramatic change that necessitates using skills and strengths to reduce physical aggression and increase happiness. This study examined the multiple facets of self-control skills in achieving both goals simultaneously, in a sample of 248 Arab adolescents in Israel. We conceptualized and tested a new multi-mediator model…