Search Results (638)

Youth in northern Ghana experience high rates of unintended pregnancy due to limited access to and use of sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) services. Peer-led interventions are effective in increasing the youth uptake of SRH services, but limited peer-led interventions have been developed for Ghana. This study explores youth (ages 15–24 years) and clinical provider perspectives on youth SRH to inform the co-design of a peer-led SRH counseling program in northern Ghana. We conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 22 SRH providers and 27 youth. We then conducted an inductive thematic analysis and mapped themes onto the COM-B (Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavior) model. Results revealed that youth capability to make informed and confident SRH decisions is constrained by a fragmented information environment. Although access to SRH services is increasing in the region, logistical and privacy barriers limit adolescents’ opportunities to engage in care. Religious and cultural norms stigmatize youth SRH care, though support for contraceptive use is growing among more educated sectors. Youth motivation to use SRH services is driven by a desire for autonomy but undermined by concerns about contraceptive side effects and anticipated stigma. This study supports the co-development of a contextually grounded peer counseling SRH intervention in northern Ghana. Full article

Background: Young adult mental health is a critical global concern. This study aims to investigate the relationship between compliance and psychological distress in young adults, paying particular attention to the mediating role of affect and the moderating role of cultural values in China. Methods: A large-scale cross-sectional study was conducted, with 11,038 (Mage = 20.58 ± 4.11) young adults recruited. A series of self-reported questionnaires was used, including measures of psychological distress, cultural factors, and compliance. Latent structural equation modelling was applied to investigate how the compliance trait links to psychological distress. Results: Findings revealed a positive association between compliance and psychological distress. The analysis further demonstrated that both positive and negative affect served as significant mediators in this association. Additionally, the association was moderated by cultural factors, particularly individualism. Individualism significantly buffered both the direct effect of compliance on psychological distress and the mediating effect of negative affect. Conclusions: These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the social and psychological determinants of youth mental health, a key priority for public health practice. Full article

Despite the rapid expansion of “diverse books” initiatives in children’s and young adult (YA) literature, Jewish identity remains inconsistently recognized within diversity frameworks in publishing, curriculum, and literacy education. This conceptual review examines how Jewish children’s and YA literature can serve as a resource through which young people interpret identity, confront erasure, and imagine more inclusive social worlds. Drawing on culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical literacy, and critical youth studies, the article argues that Jewish narratives expand the interpretive possibilities of literacy education by foregrounding diasporic identity, antisemitism, and the internal diversity of Jewish communities. To operationalize this argument, the article proposes a culturally sustaining framework for K–12 literacy instruction organized across four strands: contemporary Jewish life, global Jewish identities, intersectional Jewish identities, and agency-centered narratives of antisemitism. The discussion illustrates how educators can use these texts to support youth agency, ethical inquiry, and critical media literacy, including in contexts shaped by curricular and political constraints. By repositioning Jewish children’s and YA literature as central to inclusive literacy, this article reframes representation as a question of interpretive possibility. Full article

This study examines how Indonesian university students negotiate the meanings of extremism and tolerance across digital and campus environments. Using phenomenology, the research examines the lived experiences of 35 students from Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, and Bandung to understand how digital platforms, everyday interactions, and symbolic practices mediate their religious identity work. The analysis applies Castells’ concept of communication power and Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and symbolic power to explore how digital platforms shape ideological narratives and emotional framing. Key Findings reveal that extremism is experienced not merely as ideological deviation but as a communicative rupture—manifested through coercive discourse, exclusionary framing, and digitally amplified moral authority—while tolerance emerges as a socially cultivated practice embedded in relational norms, affective positioning, and strategic self-presentation in mediated environments. Social media functions simultaneously as a site of exposure, contestation, and subtle resistance, enabling students to reframe, soften, or oppose dominant narratives through micro-activism and selective curation. This study offers a novel contribution by integrating data-driven phenomenological insights with a theory-driven account of mediated power, demonstrating how symbolic power circulates through digital infrastructures and shapes the cultural politics of religious pluralism among youth in contemporary Indonesia. Full article

For rural adolescent girls in the Bolivian Andes, adolescence is not a “protected” transitional life stage but a gendered laboring condition. This article explores the lived experiences of adolescent girls in a rural Quechua community in Cochabamba, drawing on the initial phase of a longitudinal Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) project (2023–2024). By integrating Silvia Federici’s theory of social reproduction with Axel Honneth’s recognition theory, the study conceptualizes a “laboring subjectivity” defined by a ch’ixi reality where two dimensions of labor exist in constant, dynamic interaction. The findings reveal these dimensions of labor: “Working to Do,” which encompasses the invisible, naturalized reproductive and agricultural work and unremunerated affective work required to sustain family life as a form of cultural pedagogy; and “Working to Be,” which refers to the subjective labor girls perform to negotiate recognition. Through this structural arrangement, Honneth’s spheres of love, rights, and social esteem are systematically compromised, creating a distinct recognition deficit as girls carry adult responsibilities without structural protection. Ultimately, this article argues that seasonal migration to regions such as El Trópico functions as an existential terrain where girls seek the symbolic and economic recognition denied within the local rural order. By centering adolescent girls as active laboring subjects, the research challenges Western developmental biases in youth studies and offers a nuanced reframing of the nexus between labor, mobility, and identity formation in the Global South. Full article

As digital beauty filters have become widespread among young people, their links with self-image cognition and behavioral responses have attracted growing attention. However, existing studies largely focus on Western samples or linear approaches, leaving Chinese youth underexplored in their cultural context. Using mixed methods combining grounded theory and fsQCA, this study examines the mechanisms shaping self-image cognition and behavioral responses among Chinese youth in the context of digital beauty filter use. Semi-structured interviews and three-stage coding identified four core categories: Beauty Filter Use Habits, Beauty Filter Use Motivations, Beauty Filter Use Preferences, and Psychological Responses to Beauty Filter Use. Building on this, fsQCA identified five configurational pathways. The psychological-response–motivation and psychological-response–preference core coexistence configurations were linked to high Self-Image Cognition; the three non-high Self-Image Cognition pathways formed two patterns: dual absence of psychological responses and motivations, and motivational-core absence with coexisting habits and preferences. Different self-image cognition outcomes may relate to adaptive behaviors, such as moderate retouching and naturalized self-presentation, or risk-related behaviors, such as avoidance of original images and overdependence on beauty filters. This study offers a new perspective on youth authentic self-construction and technological adaptation in the digital visual era, with implications for media literacy education, platform design, and mental health intervention. Full article

Sustainable rural tourism governance in the Global South faces a persistent challenge: enabling genuine community participation in destination management while protecting environmental assets and cultural heritage. This study examines participatory governance practices at Kampung Senyum Homestay, Cibeusi Village, West Java, Indonesia, a community-based tourism (CBT) initiative that has sustained operations for over eight years, despite a 60% failure rate among comparable initiatives. A qualitative case study design was employed, with data collected over six months (November 2022–May 2023) through participant observation (12 days), in-depth interviews with 14 stakeholders, and document analysis. Data were analyzed using Miles et al.’s interactive model and critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal three interrelated participation layers shaping tourism governance outcomes: interpersonal engagement fostering horizontal host–guest relationships (89% of tourists report kinship-based experiences); deliberative governance through musyawarah desa enabling community-led environmental stewardship, including the collective rejection of a proposal to bring 100 tourists monthly to protect waterfall ecosystems; and digital storytelling by youth extending local heritage narratives globally (150 posts, 7.2% engagement rate). The study proposes a ‘layered participation’ model demonstrating that tourism sustainability depends on participatory governance mechanisms that build social trust, integrate traditional ecological knowledge, and balance economic development with environmental conservation and cultural heritage management. The study also critically examines structural inequalities, including gender asymmetries, unequal benefit distribution, and linguistic barriers, that persist within participatory governance structures, offering a contextually grounded governance framework for rural tourism destinations in the Global South. Full article

What does it mean to bring climate adaptation and sustainability “on the ground” into a Thuringian small town that is both urban and rural? From 2021 to 2024, we conducted a cooperative research project with the municipality to investigate this. For three years, the research partners explored ways to integrate the “big” topics of climate adaptation, sustainability, public services, and demographic change into the everyday urban development processes of a small town in rural Thuringia, an area experiencing long-term population decline. The result of the project is three volumes in the ISDN series that provide initial answers, which are often derived from the combination of research and teaching. One volume focuses on energy, housing, and mobility, presenting stakeholders, projects, and research results that can be used to address these issues locally in rural-urban municipalities more broadly. Another collects findings on socio-infrastructural planning, offering a dedicated perspective on gender and youth “in the countryside”. Ultimately, all socio-infrastructural planning activities aim to support an “Urban Social Cultural Care”. This article aims to contextualize transfer-oriented research within theoretical debates on sustainability transitions, paying special attention to the opportunities available to municipalities with limited administrative resources to enhance their own scope of action. Full article

Youth experiencing homelessness and housing instability (YEH) face disproportionate health risks and structural barriers to health equity, which were intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a community-based participatory research study with 21 adolescents (ages 13–17) and transitional-aged youth (ages 18–26) experiencing homelessness or housing instability in San Diego, California, USA. Between February and July 2023, we conducted six “arts-based engagement sessions” (5 in English, 1 in Spanish) that blended expressive arts and focus group approaches to examine how YEH accessed, evaluated, and applied health information, and how trust and material and structural resource constraints shaped engagement with COVID-19 information and prevention guidance. We analyzed data via applied thematic analysis. Participants described how COVID-19 restrictions and economic disruption amplified pre-existing housing precarity, worsening material conditions and mental health. Participants selectively trusted COVID-19 information based on who provided it, how credible it felt, and whether it aligned with their lived experiences. Community-based providers and, for some, churches and cultural or ancestral knowledge were key information sources. Trust in government and public health messaging was conditional and shaped by perceptions of credibility, coherence, and political motivation. Participants described information overload and rapidly changing guidance as overwhelming and often incompatible with their material realities, leading to disengagement, reliance on intuition, or deprioritization of prevention behaviors. Effective communication during future health emergencies must center trusted relational messengers, align guidance with lived realities, and address the structural conditions that shape whether health information can be meaningfully acted upon. Full article

The article examines the protective role of the family and youth formative communities against substance and behavioral addictions in adolescence. Its aim is to synthesize knowledge of risk and protective factors and to indicate how family and community environments can lower the likelihood of risky behaviors. The first part of the paper presents a multifactorial paradigm for explaining young people’s use of psychoactive substances, drawing on data about the situation in Poland. The second part explores the social significance of the family and participation in formative groups, especially religious ones, by referring to the concepts of social capital, normative socialization, and communal rootedness. The third part depicts Scouting and the Light-Life Movement as examples of educational settings that promote a lifestyle grounded in self-discipline, abstinence, and communal responsibility. Overall, the conducted analyses conclude that the protective potential of these environments is not automatic but depends on the quality of relationships, the presence of significant adults, the credibility of norms, and the communities’ capacity to respond to young people’s experiences amid ongoing secularization and cultural individualization. Full article

The ongoing Palestinian conflict, particularly the escalation in Gaza since October 2023, has raised pressing concerns regarding human rights and international justice. This study explores how university students in northern Spain perceive the situation in Palestine, analyzing their levels of knowledge, emotional responses, and critical positioning. Using a mixed-method approach based on an online questionnaire and the Grid Elaboration Method, data were gathered from 147 students enrolled in education-related programs. The findings reveal three core themes in students’ representations of the conflict: resistance as a form of national identity, humanitarian suffering of civilians, and structural injustice perpetuated by global power dynamics. Gender and academic background influenced discursive emphasis, with Social Education students showing more politicized perspectives and women focusing more on Palestinian dignity and resistance. These insights underscore the potential of higher education to foster critical thinking, empathy, and engagement with international conflicts, and highlight the role of universities in cultivating a culture of peace and human rights. Full article

This paper offers a theoretical reinterpretation of the groundbreaking Greentown study using Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. Rather than presenting new empirical findings, it examines previously published research to study children’s involvement in organised crime networks through a relational, practice-based lens. Dominant approaches to youth offending and gang participation tend to focus on individual risk factors, programme effectiveness or structural indicators and can struggle to account for the enduring social logics through which criminal authority is reproduced across generations. Drawing on Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital and symbolic power, the paper interprets Greentown as a localised social field in which a core family network accumulates and deploys social, cultural, economic and symbolic capital to secure compliance, cultivate loyalty and sustain informal forms of governance. Attention is paid to the role of symbolic narratives and mythmaking in minimising the visible presence of the state and normalising participation for young people and residents. The analysis illustrates how such symbolic orders can persist even where individual agents desist, contributing to the relative stability of networked harm. The paper argues that Bourdieu provides a coherent and theoretically disciplined framework for understanding organised criminal networks as socially embedded fields and suggests that interventions attentive to symbolic power and misrecognition may complement existing criminal justice responses. While explicitly interpretive in scope, the paper points towards the value of theory-led re-readings of empirical research for addressing the complex and ‘wicked’ nature of organised networked offending. Full article

Background: Quality of life (QoL) after spinal cord injury (SCI) is influenced by psychosocial factors, yet less is known about how these factors are examined across national contexts. Objective: This scoping review mapped studies examining depression, employment, and social participation in relation to QoL or health-related QoL (HRQoL) among individuals with SCI in the United States and South Korea. Methods: Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, five databases were searched for peer-reviewed English- and Korean-language studies published between 2007 and 2025. Results: Sixteen studies were included: nine from South Korea and seven from the United States. Depression and psychological distress were associated with lower QoL/HRQoL in both countries, although South Korean studies more often examined depression with stress and functional concerns, whereas U.S. studies situated depression within participation, spirituality, and youth psychosocial functioning. Employment was linked to QoL/HRQoL in both contexts, with South Korean studies emphasizing economic activity, vocational rehabilitation, and financial strain, and U.S. studies emphasizing employment status and vocational outcomes. Social participation was important in both countries, but South Korean studies focused more on community transition, functional independence, and social attitudes, whereas U.S. studies emphasized participation contexts, accessibility, and social relationships. Conclusions: Across the three domains, depression, employment, and social participation emerged as recurring psychosocial domains associated with QoL/HRQoL after SCI in both countries. These differences suggest that psychosocial adaptation after SCI should be understood within cultural and rehabilitation contexts. Full article

The concept of subjective well-being among Orang Asli youth remains insufficiently understood due to limited empirical research on the community. Orang Asli youth represent a unique social group whose experiences are shaped by their culture, language, belief systems, and traditional lifestyle. These elements influence how well-being is perceived beyond economic indicators. Therefore, this study aims to explain the concept of subjective well-being among the Orang Asli Seletar youth. A case study research design was employed in this qualitative study. Twenty (20) informants aged 18 to 30 years, residing in Johor, participated in focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews. This study’s findings identified seven (7) main themes related to the concept of subjective well-being among Orang Asli Seletar youth: (i) tranquility; (ii) happiness; (iii) comfort; (iv) sufficiency; (v) preferences; (vi) awareness; and (vii) satisfaction. In conclusion, this study provides a basis for understanding the subjective well-being of youth within the Orang Asli Seletar community. From the perspective of mainstream society, their lifestyle may appear modest and inadequate. However, this does not accurately reflect their true experience, as objective well-being should not be the sole measure of this community’s development. Greater emphasis on subjective well-being is essential to support this community’s thriving. Full article

World Youth Day (WYD) is a significant, reoccurring event in the contemporary Catholic Church. The Church remains in a transitional period marked by the disappearance and emergence of institutional structures. One major challenge is the capacity of the Church to nurture younger Catholics in the face of an increasingly dominant secular culture. This is a major concern of Catholic school systems which require large numbers of committed teachers to retain authenticity. WYD addresses the needs of religiously active teachers by, amongst other things, providing them with experiences of being part of a moral community and of the transcendent element of religious life. Both of these are often lacking in the conventional lives of many younger teachers. Encountering them at WYD all contributes to sustaining religious plausibility. Full article