The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which relatedness support affects motivational profiles in rural vs. urban physical education (PE) students. Participants included rural (n=177) and urban (n=431) junior high/high school students (grades 5-12) from Alberta, a western province in Canada (n=508), and Utah, a state in the intermountain west of the USA (n=100). This cross-sectional study measured and assessed students’ basic psychological needs of student-to-student relatedness, student-to-teacher relatedness, competence, and autonomy using a revised version of the Basic Psychological Needs Scale (BPNS-R). Situational motivation was measured and assessed using the Situational Intrinsic Motivation Scale – Physical Education (SIMS-PE). For data analysis, MANOVA was used to examine significant differences among group variables (urban and rural, gender, and state) for selected variables (basic psychological needs indices and motivational indices). Significant rural vs. urban effects were noted for basic psychological needs and reveal urban students as having significantly more student-to-teacher relatedness (p = .032), competence (p = .001), and autonomy (p = .002) than rural students. Significant rural vs. urban effects were also noted for motivational indices and reveal urban students as having significantly more intrinsic motivation (p < .001), identified regulation (p = .001), and higher Self-Determination Index (SDI) scores (p < .001) than rural students. Significant state effects reveal Alberta students are significantly more intrinsically motivated (p < .001) than Utah students. Due to sheer population size of metropolitan areas, urban students inherently have more PE options and more funding, which possibly allows them to experience greater autonomy and competence. Limited choices in rural schools could be a contributing factor for lower autonomy and competence measures. Rural PE teachers oftentimes teach other core subjects, which possibly makes PE classes less engaging and rigid, thereby causing lower relatedness between teacher and student. The Covid-19 pandemic has predominately paused extracurricular physical activities in urban settings, potentially catalyzing greater meaning and importance in urban PE; possibly initiating greater self-determined motivation for urban students. Rural PE teachers are recommended to be intentional with their relatedness support. PE teachers should adopt a holistic approach to satisfying the basic psychological needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy instead of focusing on one need at the expense of others.

The parenting literature has long explored the influence that socioeconomic status has on parenting practices, but more recent theorists have suggested that contextual factors may influence or explain this relation in some capacity. The current study sought to explore the influence of these contextual factors within a nationwide sample of caregiving grandparents. The results indicate that grandparental financial well-being, depressive symptoms, scarcity of resources, and grandparenting practices share significant associations. Further, contextual factors (i.e., grandparental depressive symptoms and access to resources) mediate the relation between financial well-being and both the positive and negative grandparenting practices that are employed. These findings suggest that there are additional factors that may better explain differences in parenting practices employed by a group of caregivers who are typically within lower socioeconomic strata. This may allow for more targeted interventions to further support a large proportion of child caregivers.

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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between expenditures on local public services and the net migration rate for Swedish urban and rural municipalities. Data from Statistics Sweden over all Swedish municipalities between 2004 and 2014 was used for the empirical analysis. The data also included control variables to control for differences in economic and demographic conditions in the municipalities. The result found using pooled OLS with instrumental variables reveals great differences on the significance of local service expenditure in relation to migration for the two types of municipalities. Childcare was found to be of great significance for rural regions. In contrast, social assistance had a positive association in urban regions while it had a negative insignificant correlation in rural regions. Moreover, culture and education were found to be insignificant in relation to migration for both regions. The results also showed similarities such as elderly care and local taxes were significantly negatively correlated with migration in both type of regions. Overall, the results show that certain local services, such as childcare, are correlated with migration. Nevertheless, economic conditions such as low local taxes, presence of a university campus and having low unemployment are as well of importance to attract residents to both types of municipalities.