No abstract

Although gender differences in self-efficacy and subjective well-being have been reported in previous studies, little published research has investigated the interrelationships between these variables in adolescents. 648 Chinese adolescents were administered a series of questionnaires to test the hypothesis that self-efficacy mediates the relationship between gender and subjective well-being. The results indicated that adolescent girls had lower general self-efficacy than adolescent boys, which explained girls' lower subjective well-being. The theoretical and practical implications may help parents and educators to strengthen adolescents' happiness.

An inverse relationship between self-esteem and loneliness has been established in previous research. In the current study, the hypothesis that social anxiety plays a mediated role between self-esteem and loneliness was investigated. A total of 285 Chinese college students were enrolled and measured on a series of questionnaires to measure self-esteem, social anxiety and loneliness. The causal steps approach indicated that social anxiety partially mediated the relationship between self-esteem and loneliness. Furthermore, the Bootstrapping 95% confidence intervals as well as the Bayesian 95% credible intervals indicated that the indirect effect was significant. In addition, both the kappa-squared and R-squared mediation effect size measures indicated that the effect size of the mediating effect was medium, and this result was confirmed by the other four effect size measures, the partially standardized indirect effect, the completely standardized indirect effect, the proportion mediated and the ratio effect size measure.

We examined the mediating role of optimism in the relationship between mindfulness and positive affect with a sample of 277 Chinese people aged between 51 and 65 years who completed the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, the Life Orientation Test-Revised, and the Positive Affect subscale of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Pearson correlation analysis results showed a significant positive relationship between mindfulness, optimism, and positive affect. Mediation analysis results further showed that optimism partially mediated the association between mindfulness and positive affect. Thus, as the findings indicated that enhancing mindfulness levels results in greater optimism, this should be considered an effective measure for promoting positive affect in older adults.

Abstract:Most of the applied psychological researchers usually conduct studies requiring application of advanced mediation models, such as multiple mediator models. However, in designing research, most of the applied researchers largely ignore the statistical power of their studies. As a result, power analyses are ignored when researchers report their results. It is well recognized that low power is one possible reason for no statistically significant result being identified in a study. Moreover, studies with low statistical power have been labeled "scientifically useless". The current study describes how to apply Monte Carlo simulation to test the type I error rates and statistical power of mediating effects in a multiple mediator model. Findings from the current simulation study indicated that the effect sizes of mediating effects and sample sizes were two important factors influencing type I error rates of indirect effects in a multiple mediator model. Furthermore, the requirement of sample size and desired power level were strongly depended on the effect size of the indirect effect.