| 1. |
- Johansson, Fred
(författare)
-
Aspects of the aetiology of mental health problems among university students
- 2023
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Mental disorders are among the leading causes of years lost due to disability in young people globally. Students are no exception, both mental disorders and mental health problems are common among university students with dramatic increases reported in recent years. The aetiology of mental disorders and mental health problems is generally assumed to be multicausal, with factors at different levels contributing to their development. Given the complexity of the causal network underlying mental health problems, it has been argued that a clear causal framework is needed when studying the aetiology of mental health problems. This thesis aimed to investigate some aspects of the potential aetiology of mental health problems among university students. Specifically, it focuses on four exposures at the psychosocial level presented in four studies: 1) the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, 2) poor sleep quality, 3) procrastination and 4) sexual harassment and sexual violence. In addition to the discussion provided in each respective paper, this thesis discusses limitations and possible interpretations of our results from a modern causal inference perspective.The four studies of this thesis are based on The Sustainable University Life (SUN) cohort. The SUN cohort followed 4262 university students from eight universities in and around Stockholm, Sweden, with web-surveys at five time-points over one year.In Study I, we aimed to determine the mean trajectories of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among university students in Stockholm before and during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this, we included a subsample of 1836 university students that entered the SUN cohort before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and were followed during the months before the pandemic, during the first wave of the pandemic and in the summer, months following the first wave of the pandemic. We found that mean depression, anxiety, and stress symptom levels were largely stable during the first wave compared to the months before the pandemic and decreased slightly during the following summer months. Our results indicate that mean levels of mental health symptoms did not change much during the early phase of the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.In Study II, we aimed to determine whether sleep quality statistically interacts cross-sectionally with loneliness, risky alcohol use, perfectionistic concerns and/or physical inactivity in relation to depressive symptoms in university students. We conducted a cross-sectional study using baseline-data from all 4262 participants in the SUN cohort. We found that while all factors were associated with depressive symptoms, only perfectionistic concerns interacted with sleep quality in its relation to depression. This interaction was quite weak and explainedonly a small proportion of the variance in depressive symptoms. Overall, we did not find support for our hypothesis that poor sleep quality could interact with several different potential risk factors for depressive symptoms.In Study III, we aimed to evaluate the associations between procrastination and sixteen subsequent health outcomes (including mental health symptoms, disabling pain, lifestyle behaviours and psychosocial health factors), measured 9 months later, among university students. We used data from all participants responding to the first follow-up in the SUN cohort (n=3525) and found that procrastination was related to several subsequent health outcomes, including symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, while controlling for multiple potential confounders. Although we cannot rule out non-causal explanations for these associations, the results indicate that procrastination could have an effect on health outcomes among students, but that it is likely to be rather small for any specific health outcome.In Study IV, we investigated the impact of recent exposure to different forms of sexual harassment and sexual violence; 1) unwanted sexual attention, 2) offensive sexual remarks, 3) presentation or distribution of sexist material, 4) uncomfortable touching, 5) being offered benefits for sex and 6) sex against ones will, along with a wide definition of sexual harassment: sexual harassment (wide subjective definition) on levels of depression and anxiety symptoms three, six and nine months later, for women and men, respectively. We conducted a cohort study using data from all women and men responding to the first follow-up in the SUNcohort (n= 3503). Our results showed that women recently exposed to 1) sexual harassment (wide definition), 2) unwanted sexual attention and 3) sex against ones will showed higher subsequent levels of depression and/or anxiety symptoms. The general trend was that all exposures were related to higher symptom levels at three months, but that this difference between exposed and unexposed diminished over time, although these trends are uncertain with wide confidence intervals. The exception was exposure to sex against ones will, where exposed showed elevated symptom levels throughout the follow-up period. For men, the estimates were uncertain overall, and we refrain from interpreting these results. Our results indicate that recent exposure to different forms of sexual harassment and sexual violence may impact later depression and anxiety symptoms among women, and that there could be differences in the strength and long-term impact on mental health between different forms of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Again, we cannot, with certainty rule out non-causal reasons for these associations.Interpreting any of these results as causal effects rests on multiple assumptions, which are discussed in the thesis. Determination of causal effects preferably relies on triangulation of results from different studies with different methodology. Overall, however, I believe that this thesis has strengthened the evidence that procrastination and sexual harassment and sexual violence may be causes of mental health problems among university students. An equally important finding, is that mental health seemed rather stable during COVID-19 pandemic, indicating that the pandemic may not have caused increased mental health problems on the group level.
|
|
| 2. |
- Augstein, Frauke
(författare)
-
Mechanisms of plant root xylem developmental plasticity in response to water deficiency and salt
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Plants may be exposed to a variety of different environmental conditions including water deficiency and salt, both affecting the uptake of water into the plant. Water is taken up from the soil by the roots and distributed throughout the plant via the water conducting tissue, the xylem. Plants are remarkably plastic and have evolved different mechanisms to sense the environment and adjust their development accordingly. However, how xylem development may respond to water availability is not clear. In this thesis, I show how water deficiency and salt affect xylem development and how the observed phenotypic alterations are regulated on a molecular level. We found that upon water deficiency additional protoxylem strands were formed along with an early differentiation of the inner metaxylem. These phenotypes were regulated both by non-cell autonomous and cell autonomous signaling via the hormone abscisic acid (ABA). The expression of microRNA165 was induced by ABA signaling in the endodermis leading to downregulation of homeo domain leucine zipper class III (HD-ZIP III) transcription factors in the stele. This caused a shift in xylem identity from meta- to protoxylem and the formation of additional protoxylem strands. At the same time, cell autonomous ABA signaling upregulated several VASCULAR RELATED NAC DOMAIN (VND) transcription factors including VND7, which promoted the shift in xylem identity as well as VND2 and VND3, which promoted early differentiation of the inner metaxylem. In contrast, during an initial phase of salt stress, we observed the formation of protoxylem gaps specifically in response to ionic stress and distinct from ABA-signaling. We identified that protoxylem gaps were caused by lowered levels and signaling of the growth regulator gibberellin (GA). Downstream of GA-signaling, protoxylem gap formation upon salt was controlled by genes involved in secondary cell wall formation including the xylem master regulator VND6 and factors involved in cell wall modification. Salt tolerance assays suggested that protoxylem gaps may contribute to salt tolerance and the phenotypes that we observed upon water deficiency have been suggested to confer drought tolerance. We observed similar effects on xylem developmental plasticity in response to water deficiency and salt in various different dicot species indicating an evolutionary conservation. Thus, xylem development is of high relevance for breeding programs to generate plant varieties better adapted to a changing climate.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hirsh, Åsa, et al.
(författare)
-
Reviews of teaching methods : which fundamental issues are identified?
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Education Inquiry. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 2000-4508. ; 13:1, s. 1-20
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to discern and discuss issues with relevance to the tension between contextuality and generalisation, which recurrently are identified over time in research reviews of teaching methods. The 75 most cited reviews on teaching methods listed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2017 were analysed. Since our interest is the claims made in each article about the teaching method under study, the analysis concerned the abstract, results, discussion, conclusion, and implication parts of each review. Three main issues, cutting across the reviews over time, were identified: 1) the abundance of moderating factors, 2) the need for highly qualified teachers, and 3) the research-practice gap. It is argued that the three issues reflect tensions in original research. The implications of these findings are discussed in the article. One main conclusion is that such issues ought to be more explicitly attended to and elaborated in both primary and secondary level research. The importance of viewing validity as a multidimensional concept, including internal, external, and ecological aspects, is underlined. Further, ideas from realistic reviewing are used to discuss a contextually bound approach to causality.
|
|
| 4. |
- Nilholm, Claes, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
-
The aims and meaning of teaching as reflected in high-impact reviews of teaching research
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Teaching and Teacher Education. - Amsterdam : Elsevier. - 0742-051X .- 1879-2480. ; 107
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aims and meaning of education and teaching are contested. This article empirically explores the aims that dominate present research about teaching as reflected in high-impact reviews of research about teaching (n = 75). Four types of aims are discerned: knowledge/cognitive aims, social aims, aims encompassing the development of personal characteristics and democratic aims. With some exceptions, the reviews analyse teaching with regard to knowledge and cognitive aims only and do not explicitly attend to the aims of schooling or guiding documents. The implications of these empirical findings are discussed in light of the educational philosophies of Dewey and Thorndike.
|
|
| 5. |
- Román, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
-
Context and Implications Document for : Mapping and analysing reviews of research on teaching, 1980-2018, in Web of Science: An overview of a second-order research topography
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Review of Education. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2049-6613. ; 9:2, s. 595-598
-
Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This guide accompanies the following article: Roman, H., Sundberg, D., Hirsh,A., Forsberg, E. &Nilholm, C. Mapping and analysing reviews of research on teaching, 1980–2018, in Web ofScience: An overview of a second-order research topography, Review of Education. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3258
|
|
| 6. |
- Román, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
-
Mapping and analysing reviews of research on teaching, 1980-2018, in Web of Science : An overview of a second-order research topography
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Review of Education. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2049-6613. ; 9:2, s. 541-594
-
Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- A third level of educational research is emerging, in addition to original research and secondary-level reviews. Whereas most third-level research syntheses focus on rather restricted topical areas, this study introduces a comparative and integrative overview of prominent second-order research on teaching, including many different types of reviews and aspects of teaching. The purpose of the study is to illuminate patterns in a second-order research topography in the widespread and multifaceted field of research on teaching from 1980 to the present, in order to discuss its implications for research and review-making. The overview encompasses 75 most-cited reviews of research on teaching published in international, refereed journals from 1980 to 2018 in the Web of Science. The overview utilised a specific coding procedure covering methodology, review topics and context. The study shows that several research traditions have contributed to advances in the research on teaching over time. Reviews have become more formalised, but the distribution of different types of review formats and research traditions is relatively constant. The single most established review format is meta-analysis, but it is less dominant than might be expected in an era of evidence-based education. The reviewers mainly belong to educational psychology, applied linguistics/research on language teaching, or research on science teaching. Whereas most reviews of research on science teaching are qualitative, reviews performed by psychologists and language-education researchers are mainly quantitative or based on mixed methods as a way to rationally and cumulatively summarise and downsize unmanageable amounts of research.
|
|
