Changes in Chinese adolescent college students' psychological security during 2004–2020: A cross‐temporal meta‐analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Psychological security is the outcome of interaction between individuals and society, and it is an important indicator reflecting adolescent mental health and self-growth. Previous studies have paid more attention to external security, but less attention to individual's internal psychological security. In addition, few previous studies have examined the changes of psychological security over time and the influence of socio-cultural environmental factors on psychological security. Methods: A cross-temporal meta-analysis was performed using papers that measured the psychological security level of Chinese adolescent college students between 2004 and 2020. Moreover, a time-lag analysis was conducted to define whether the macrosocial indicators can explain the changes in Chinese adolescent college students' psychological security. Results: (1) A total of 85 papers was included in the final sample (included 48,817 Chinese adolescent college students); (2) the scores of psychological security and its two sub-dimensions were significantly negatively correlated with the year, indicating that Chinese college students' psychological security declined significantly over time;(3) seven macro social indicators from the socioeconomic environmental, social connectedness and overall social threats can predict the changes in college students' psychological security; (4) the psychological security of male and female college students decreased over time, but the gender difference was insignificant. Conclusions: Evidently, social changes play an important role in predicting changes in Chinese college students' psychological security. The results can provide a research basis for the mental health education of adolescent college students, and also provide an explanation perspective for the increasingly serious "involution" phenomenon among Chinese college students.adolescent college student, cross-temporal meta-analysis, mental health, psychological security, sense of danger and crisis | INTRODUCTIONGaining security is a common aspiration of individuals in all cultures. Maslow pointed out that security is one of the basic psychological needs of humans (Maslow, 1942(Maslow, , 1954. It is a crucial basis for individual mental health and happiness, and it is an important guarantee to help individuals grow and improve themselves (Blynova et al., 2018;Wanless, 2016). A large number of research has indicated that individual's psychological security is the outcome of the interaction between the external social environment's objective risk and internal subjective risk perception (Blynova et al.

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