The Puritans constituted a very vocal influential minority during the time of Shakespeare. One of their more interesting ideas was the doctrine of the covenant, which explained why a transcendent God would care for fallen human beings. God, for Puritans, voluntarily bound himself in a covenant to man. The interrelations of elements of grace and works make it difficult to interpret what a covenant should be like: more like a modern contract or more like a feudalistic promise system? Unlike a contract, God never ends the covenant even when humans disregard their commitment, but instead helps humans fulfill their obligations by means of mercy. The covenant also sets out specific limitations that each party is required to fulfill like a contract. Puritans applied this pattern of the covenant not only to their relationship with God, but to other relationships like business, government, and most interestingly marriage. I will focus on how Shakespeare sets out this same covenantal pattern between man and God in his depiction in Portia's and in Helena's marriages respectively. I use sixteenth and seventeenth century Puritan treatises and sermons as well as secondary experts to illustrate Shakespeare's invocation of a Puritan marriage. This Puritan interpretation of the marriage covenant points toward equality by making the couple equally obligated in the contract, yet requiring more than mere obligation. These authors believed that the marriage covenant should not just be for procreation, but cohabitation and communion of the mind.

Construction industry is based on the evaluation of building environmental impact. The current situation shows buildings reaching high standards in the field of environmental sustainability, but they often neglect occupants' satisfaction. The International Well Building Institute (IWBI) has released a new building standard called WELL, whose aim is to create sustainable buildings paying attention to occupants' health and well-being. The goal of this thesis is to understand what does WELL add to existent building certification systems. There is a large number of certification systems, green codes, green standards and several other kinds of documents that influence the way in which designers think and develop their projects. A research background is carried out to identify their requirements and fields of applicability. The innovative concepts proposed by the IWBI, need to interface with requirements from different regulations or certifications. The gap analysis performed in this work highlights which are the gaps and the overlaps between WELL and Swedish building regulations (BBR), Miljöbyggnad, BREEAM-SE and LEED-IT. The White Arkitekter's office in Stockholm, known as Katsan and certified with Miljöbyggnad Gold, is used as a case study to have a more specific approach to the problem than the general approach provided with the gap analysis. The report shows significant gaps between WELL and the other regulations and certifications, which are reduced when considering the case study. The outcomes for the different standards have been compared and they have evidenced some innovative features present only in WELL. These features answer to the research question and underline what WELL adds to sustainability concepts.

This dissertation study reports on a survey of teacher wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an ecological, strengths-based adaptation to Herman and colleagues’ (2020) 3C model for teacher wellbeing, the current study examined teachers’ contexts, working conditions supporting their feelings of competence, and coping (i.e., positive emotional state). Measures included the Measure of Stressors and Supports for Teachers (MOST) and COVID-19-specific measures created by the research team. The research was guided by the following questions: (1) What profiles emerge from teachers’ ratings of their context and competence? (2) Do these profiles of context and competence predict teachers’ abilities to cope, as measured by their positive emotional state? I hypothesized that four profiles would emerge: high context-high competence, low context-low competence, high context-low competence, and low context-high competence and that these profiles would be predictive of teachers’ emotional states. Using latent profile analysis, I found that the best-fitting solution had three profiles with high, medium, or low scores across all measures. A four-profile solution is also discussed. I discuss the findings and future research directions aimed at promoting teacher well-being in schools. / School Psychology

Background: refugee children are children who have lost their homes, families, neighborhoods, and lifestyle routines and have moved to another country. They are at risk of mental health problems due to the traumatic experiences and stressors. 9 in 10 refugee children live in refugee camps in low and middle-income countries which have limited access to resources, services, and better living conditions. Four themes were identified as factors promoting children’s mental health in refugee camps. Positive relationships, education, access to health care services, and community support Methods: 274 articles were identified for this studying using the same search strings on all 5 selected databases (PsyINFO, Psychology database, Scopus, Pubmed, Sociological Abstract) 108 duplicates were removed, and the abstract and title screen was done for 166 articles. only 25 articles went through the full-text screening using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. 7 articles were finally included in this study. Results: Results indicated that children feel happy, safe, and secure, and expressed positive behaviors when they are surrounded by quality family and peer relationships when they can have access to educational opportunities, and when they have a supportive and engaging community that provide them resources and recreational activities.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Yes / The aim of this paper is to explore eleven year old children's understanding of well-being through their completion of Well-Being Maps and subsequent interviews on their content. The children were asked to describe the people, places and things which they viewed as important to their sense of well-being. The subsequent interviews explored their rationalisations for their choices. Ninety-two eleven year old children attending four schools with varying levels of deprivation and ethnic diversity took part in the study. This is the first section of an English study which is a part of the Multi-National Children's Understanding of Well-Being Study involving 26 countries which aims to explore how children conceptualise and experience well-being from a comparative and global perspective. Commonalities and divergences in the English children's responses were explored. Across the entire sample of 92 children, there were clear commonalities. Relationships with family, predominantly parents, were viewed as very important. The reasons provided were consistent love and affection; constant support, encouragement and protection; fun to be with. The duration of this quality of parent-child interaction appeared to be the key. Trust and a sense of security were the result. Relationships with friends were deemed important by over two thirds of the children. The qualities of these relationships mirrored those with the parents with a sense of trust and security being present. Where places and activities were included on their maps, they were often linked to important relationships. Activities appeared to be important in acknowledging the relationship but also maintaining it. Activities were also valued by the children for skill development. There were some differences across the sample with relationships with friends and grandparents being more reported as important in the two areas of high deprivation, irrespective of ethnic diversity. The level of material possessions and holidays abroad were much more frequently reported in the school serving the low deprivation area. At times, the explanations for differences appeared to be an interplay of socio-economic factors and religious and cultural traditions. Suggestions for further research on children's perspectives on factors important to their well-being are made. / Health Foundation, England

Background: In Taiwan, there were 7,038 reports of attempted suicide among people aged 24 or younger in 2018. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older. Purpose: In this study, we compared United States (US) and Taiwanese college students’ spiritual well-being, psychological well-being, and suicidal ideation. Methods: A total of 661 college students (481 from the US and 180 from Taiwan) were recruited to complete the survey study. This was a cross-sectional comparative research design. SPSS 28.0 was used to do the data analysis. Chi-square tests, independent t-tests, Pearson Correlations, and Stepwise Multiple Regressions were used to examine the research questions. Results: Compared with Taiwanese college students, US college students had higher scores in spiritual well-being and psychological well-being. US and Taiwanese college students’ spiritual well-being had significant relationships with psychological well-being and suicidal ideation. The significant predictors for the US college students’ psychological well-being were Life Satisfaction/ self-actualization and Life/self-responsibility, while Taiwanese college students had total scores of Spiritual Well-being and Life Satisfaction/ self-actualization. Life Satisfaction/ self-actualization had a significantly negative association with Taiwanese college students’ suicidal ideation. Total scores of Spiritual Well-being and Faith/belief were predictors for US college students’ suicidal ideation and they had significant negative relationships. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: College students’ psychological well-being and suicidal ideation are often cited as important areas. Understanding factors that influence positive psychological well-being is important in order to institute protective factors and provide emotional support.

Gratitude has become one of the most central concepts in positive psychology and counseling. Most of all, gratitude positively influences the well-being of human beings. Despite growing interest in dispositional gratitude and well-being in cultural frameworks, these relationships have not been systemically compared across cultures. Thus, in order to investigate the cross-cultural similarities and differences in dispositional gratitude and well-being, this study systemically examined the associations between dispositional gratitude and well-being indicators, including subjective well-being such as life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, and psychological well-being such as purpose in life, autonomy, personal growth, environmental mastery, positive relationships with others, and self-acceptance, of university students in the United States and South Korea, representing each individualistic and collectivistic culture. Moreover, increased knowledge of the moderators provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between gratitude and well-being in cultural contexts. Thus, this study also investigated the moderating effects of indebtedness on the relationship between dispositional gratitude and subjective well-being in two countries. This study utilized a web-based survey and included a valid sample of 307 American and 306 Korean college students. The independent samples t-test analyses indicated that American and Korean university students differed significantly in the mean levels of all study variables. Specifically, compared to the American participants, Korean participants reported higher mean levels of dispositional gratitude, life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, total score of psychological well-being, environmental mastery, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. On the other hand, American participants reported higher mean levels of autonomy and personal growth than Korean participants. Second, the results from Pearson coefficients revealed that dispositional gratitude was significantly associated with all indicators of subjective and psychological well-being in both the United States and Korea. Third, the results from Fisher Z analyses showed that the differences in the associations of dispositional gratitude with negative affect, total psychological well-being score, environmental mastery, and personal growth between American and Korean participants were statistically significant. These associations of American university students were significantly more robust than those of Korean university students. Lastly, the results from multiple hierarchical analyses indicated that indebtedness did not moderate the relationship between dispositional gratitude and three subjective well-being indicators for American and Korean college students. This study is also meaningful in that it provides insight into how counselors or educators should intervene with their clients with gratitude interventions within cultural contexts. Moreover, these results could also stimulate future empirical work to replicate and extend more representative and larger samples from different cultures and other moderators. Lastly, limitations and future research directions are discussed.