This article examines the impact of the host society’s social characteristics on second-generation immigrants’ understanding of their national and ethnic identities. Specifically, we studied how second-generation Iranians in Sweden identify themselves with Iranian society, with the Iranian ethnic group in Sweden, and/or with Swedish society, and then we compared second-generation Iranians in Sweden with those in the USA concerning the issue in question. To gather the data in Sweden, we used semi-structured e-mail interviews with 15 young people of Iranian background. We used secondary data to compare our results with those obtained in the USA. When comparing the results of this study with those obtained in the USA, we did not find the identity tensions and crisis reported by research on second-generation Iranians in the USA in members of the same generation in Sweden. Some policy recommendations were suggested.

In this study, we map and describe the coping methods used by members of the university community in Sweden to deal with the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. This study, which used simple random sampling, was quantitative. It employed a modified version of the RCOPE instrument as well as items from earlier studies of meaning-making coping in Sweden. Among participants (n = 277, 64% women), the most frequently used coping method was nature as a resource in dealing with stress and sadness, followed by listening to the sounds of surrounding nature and thinking of life as part of a greater whole; these coping methods were the most common in all subgroups studied. We used a cultural perspective to better understand the application of certain meaning-making coping methods.

Aims: This study aimed to describe and understand the individual and social dimensions of resiliency among Iranian academics as professionals during the early wave of the ongoing pandemic. Furthermore, we aimed to emphasize the cultural context in our analysis. Method: A cross-sectional survey design was adopted. We used convenient sampling, administered through an online survey, among academics at Iranian universities (n = 196, 75% women). We employed the CD-RISC 2 instrument, items on life meaning, and a modified version of Pargament’s RCOPE instrument (Meaning, Control, Comfort/Spirituality, Intimacy/Spirituality, and Life Transformation). Results: The results revealed a strong level of resilience among men (M = 5.78) and women (M = 5.52). Self-rated health was rated as excellent, very good, or good among a majority (92%) of the participants, more so among men. Family was one of the factors that most strongly gave life meaning, followed by friends, work/school, and religion/spirituality. There was a strong correlation between self-rated health and life as part of a greater whole, being alone, and listening to the sounds of the surrounding nature. Conclusions: Both personal and social levels of resilience and meaning-making are seen in the results, with an ability to balance between obstacles and resources. Cultural practices are interdependent, which also include the individual and social dimensions of resiliency and meaning-making.

This article is written on the basis of a study on meaning-making coping in Iran. The study is a part of an international project in 10 countries with different religious and cultural backgrounds. This article aims to discuss the secular existential meaning-making coping methods employed by Iranian cancer patients. Interviews were conducted with 27 participants with various kinds of cancer. Nine secular existential meaning-making coping strategies emerged from the analyses of the qualitative interviews. These coping methods are as follows: Ignoring the illness, Distraction, Altruism, Encounter with others, Nature, Discourse of the self, Visualization, Positive solitude, and Positive thinking and transformational orientation. It seems that, using these strategies, our sample of Iranian cancer patients/survivors have been denying/ignoring their illness, and/or empowering themselves. We discuss the results, considering the potential influence of cultural elements, including Iranian Islam, Persian mysticism, and Persian literature, on the selection of the coping strategies. The study contributes to our understanding of coping via elucidating how seriously ill individuals in Iran try to manage the challenges caused by a health crisis. 

The present article is based on an international study on meaning-making coping aimed at understanding the role of culture in coping. The larger study has been conducted among cancer patients in 10 countries. The present article is confined to the results obtained in our study in Iran and restricted to religious coping methods. Twenty-seven participants with various kinds of cancer were interviewed. The several religious coping methods found in the present study are categorised on the basis of RCOPE?s five basic religious functions. The study reveals, among others, the impact of cultural beliefs on certain religious coping methods, even among those who are not regarded as practicing Muslims. The study highlights the importance of investigating cultural and social context when exploring the use of the meaning-making coping strategies in different countries.

The death of a child may result in traumatizing forms of grief, and meaning-making coping with loss seems to be important in prevention of intense psychosocial problems among bereaved parents. The aim of this quantitative pilot study was to discover the divergent meaning-making coping methods used by bereaved parents in Sweden. In doing so, 162 respondents were selected using a convenience sampling method, and they responded to the modified version of RCOPE. The study revealed that the strategies talking to others about their feelings, pondering the meaning of life alone, and being in nature for greater emotional affiliation, i.e., what we call secular existential coping methods, have been the most used meaning-making coping methods among Swedish mourning parents. While explaining the results, we considered the respondents’ cultural background and speculated about the potential influence of cultural teachings and elements in the selection of ways of coping with bereavement. Further, we compared the results obtained with those of the two other Swedish studies conducted among people coping with cancer and COVID-19 to further discuss the impact of culture on coping with illness, loss, grief, and crisis. The study supports the idea that culture plays an essential role in the choice of coping methods

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic changed the academic world in various ways, and most universities are still closed and continue operating via teleworking.

OBJECTIVE: This study is intended to investigate how university faculty/staff and students in Sweden have coped with the lockdown and working/studying from home during the pandemic.

METHODS: A survey was conducted among 277 women and men working and studying at different universities in Sweden.

RESULTS: The results indicate that most (61%) respondents were very or somewhat satisfied with the current work-from-home arrangement. Additionally, they indicate that, overall, almost 30% were working more than usual due to the pandemic and teleworking. The coping methods having the highest impact on overall job satisfaction were: "thinking about what I can do rather than what I can't do"; "being able to access medical resources and medical services if I need to seek help"; and "having trust in state or health authorities in my country."

CONCLUSIONS: The study reveals that Sweden can serve as a good example of how university faculty/staff and students can address the occupational challenges caused by a health pandemic and possible subsequent quarantines.

The coronavirus pandemic changed the academic world in many ways, and most academic institutions continue operating through teleworking. The aim of the present study was to determine how satisfied the university community (faculty/staff members and students) in Iran has been with remote work, and the ways in which they have dealt with the lockdown and working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. A survey was conducted among 196 academics from different universities in Iran. The results show that a majority of our participants (54%) are very or somewhat satisfied with the current work-from-home arrangement. The most frequently used methods for managing the challenges of teleworking were social contacts with colleagues or classmates at a distance, solidarity and offering kindness and support to the people around them. The least used coping method was trusting state or local health authorities in Iran. The coping strategies that have the highest impact on overall teleworking satisfaction are “Make myself busy with my working day because it makes me feel useful,”“I care for my mental and physical health,” and “Think about what I can do rather than what I can’t do.” The findings were discussed in detail, taking into consideration the theoretical approaches, as well as bringing forth more dynamic aspects of the culture.

Introduction: Meaning-making coping is used by people with cancer to help them deal with the stress and emotional turmoil associated with their diagnosis. It is a multifaceted approach that can be influenced by cultural, existential, and personal factors. Research on meaning-making coping among Filipinos diagnosed with cancer is sparse. This study examines how a sample of Filipino people with cancer cope with their illnesses.

Methods: We employed a qualitative approach. The study involved 20 participants with various types of cancer in the Philippines who were selected through purposive sampling and agreed to be interviewed.

Results: The thematic analysis of the interviews revealed the application of both religious and secular meaning-making coping by participants. The study also confirmed the potential influence of culture on coping strategies.

Discussion: The results indicate that religion plays a significant role in Filipino coping mechanisms, given that the Philippines is predominantly a Christian nation. Additionally, the findings highlight the importance of close family ties in Filipino culture and how it contributes to coping with cancer.

Dimensional approach to personality disorders conceptualizes personality disorders quantitatively different from normal personality. Five-Dimensional Personality Test (5DPT; Coolidge et al. in Pers Individ Differ 44(6):1326–1334, 2008) provides an assessment based on this approach. The 5DPT holds considerable usefulness and potential for investigating personality, and this potential may be much better utilized through availability of abbreviated versions and culture-specific forms. This paper describes efforts to develop and validate a Persian form of 5DPT. Findings of the study showed that some items of the original form were not able to represent the theoretical factors. However, discarding these items did not affect the factor structure of the new measure. It was demonstrated that the Persian version is composed of five saturated factors (neuroticism, absorption, orderliness, extraversion, and insensitivity) fitted to the data. Also, the structural equivalence of the two forms was discussed. Since the final scale turned out to be more concise, consisting of 75 of the original 100 items, application of this measure in research and clinical settings is facilitated.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world with severe health consequences, affecting some populations more than others. One understudied population is the academic community. This study, part of a larger project looking at COVID-19 in Sweden and internationally, aims to understand the individual and collective dimensions of resilience among academics in Sweden during the early wave of the pandemic. Method: A quantitative research design was applied for this cross-sectional study. We used simple random sampling, administered through an online survey, on academics at Swedish universities (n = 278, 64% women). We employed the CD-RISC 2 (the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale) to measure personal/individual resilience, additional items for social/collective resilience, and a meaning-making coping instrument (meaning, control, comfort/spirituality, intimacy/spirituality, life transformation). Results: The results revealed a strong level of personal/individual resilience among men (M = 6.05) and a level just below strong among women (M = 5.90). By age group, those 35–49-year-olds showed strong resilience (M = 6.31). Family was the dominant social/collective resilience factor, followed by friends, nature, work/school, and, lastly, religion/spirituality. There was a positive and significant correlation between self-rated health and personal/individual resilience (r = 0.252, p = 0.001) and positive but weak correlations and negative significant correlations between personal/individual resilience and religious coping methods. Conclusions: During the pandemic, the family took priority in meaning-making, which is an interesting change in a strong individual-oriented society such as Sweden.

Following the failures in traditional methods of teaching, theorists have recently emphasized students’ active role in education in which the teacher is no longer a mere transmitter of knowledge. Discussion-based teaching has been regarded as a route to improving students’ active role. The current study intended to discover the benefits of using discussion for social interaction and critical thinking disposition from Iranian students’ perspective. Participants included 14 first-year educational psychology students who were selected through purposive sampling method. A general psychology course at the University of Tehran was held based on proposed patterns for class discussion. The data were collected through structured interviews, and analyzed through interpretive analysis. Findings showed that the components of critical thinking dispositions and social interaction were mostly exhibited during discussions. It seems that involvement of students in class discussions have benefits over the traditional realms of education. These positive effects are seen at personal and social levels, bringing forth more dynamic aspects of culture.

In 2014, we collected more than 3000 drawings of God in Iran. Here we present the conditions for this collection and the results derived from it. We interpret our fndings from the perspective of developmental psychology, and discuss them in terms of social, cultural, and contextual factors (media, formal and informal education). We consider God representation with regard to Iranian-Islamic culture. Additionally, we make a brief comparison between our findings, drawn from participants in Iran, and the findings of studies conducted in Western cultures. Finally, limitations of the study and future research directions are critically discussed.

In this paper, we examined how university staff and students coped with challenges related to working or studying from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the level of satisfaction with working from home. An online survey was conducted among faculty, staff, and students at universities in 24 countries (n = 674). The results show that over 80% of the respondents used multiple coping methods. Three clusters of coping methods were generated through factor analysis: (1) social and health factor, with focus on personal health and the social surrounding, (2) activity factor, i.e., being busy with work or studies, finding up-to-date information about COVID-19, while thinking about what one could do rather than what one could not do, and (3) public health factor, which meant trusting health authorities while avoiding misinformation from sources such as social media. Furthermore, 56% of the respondents were very or somewhat satisfied with working from home. Differences in the methods of coping and satisfaction with working from home highlight the need for employers to prepare for working from home beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

This original web-based database was developed at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) as part of the international research project “Drawings of gods”, which explores children's representations of supernatural agents. Its primary purpose is to store and organize data and metadata to be easily accessible to all affiliated researchers. However, anyone interested in the matter can view the drawings, as they were made publicly available. At present, our corpus is composed of over 5'100 drawings collected in different parts of the world (i.e., Japan, Russia, Switzerland, Romania, USA and Iran) and yet constantly developing.

Understanding adjustment, coping processes, and various coping strategies is important for preserving and enhancing mental and physical well-being. This chapter reviews and discusses religious/spiritual coping and secular existential coping, their theoretical underpinnings, and their relation to health. Empirical studies conducted in a health-related context were highlighted to demonstrate how these coping strategies are employed in real-life practice. Further, we elaborated on the potential role of culture in individuals’ orientation toward these coping resources. Some possible areas for future research and a few implications for healthcare practitioners, palliative care professionals, and policymakers were outlined.

In this paper, we have mapped the coping methods used to address the coronavirus pandemic by members of the academic community. We conducted an anonymous survey of a convenient sample of 674 faculty/staff members and students from September to December 2020. A modified version of the RCOPE scale was used for data collection. The results indicate that both religious and existential coping methods were used by respondents. The study also indicates that even though 71% of informants believed in God or another religious figure, 61% reported that they had tried to gain control of the situation directly without the help of God or another religious figure. The ranking of the coping strategies used indicates that the first five methods used by informants were all non-religious coping methods (i.e., secular existential coping methods): regarding life as a part of a greater whole, regarding nature as an important resource, listening to the sound of surrounding nature, being alone and contemplating, and walking/engaging in any activities outdoors giving a spiritual feeling. Our results contribute to the new area of research on academic community's coping with pandemic-related stress and challenges.

Background: Little research has been done to identify the individual-level factors contributing to the prevention of administrative corruption. Specifically, Iranian public employees are an understudied population in terms of individual and contextual factors that contribute to the prevention of administrative corruption. This study aimed to identify the perception of public servants about the psychosocial factors that facilitate the prevention of corruption.

Method: Data were collected using semistructured interviews with 14 individuals working in public sector departments or agencies in Tehran.

Results: Six main themes emerged from the data: cognitive characteristics (including “detachment-promoting thoughts and beliefs” and “consequence-focused thoughts and beliefs”), emotional patterns (including “deterrent negative emotions” and “deterrent positive emotions”), personality characteristics (including “self-oriented conservative personality traits” and “other-oriented prosocial personality traits”), behavioral strategies (including “need-fulfillment strategies” and “self-care strategies”), familial background (including “growing up in a rule-oriented and value-oriented family” and “living with an honest and supportive spouse”), and organizational context (including “employee monitoring” and “rule-based and ethical space of the organization”).

Conclusion: The study reveals some psychological and contextual factors that could be involved in preventing administrative corruption in Iran. These factors can be taken into consideration when designing preventive measures and policies aimed at reducing corrupt behaviors in public agents and promoting ethics in public service.

This study aimed to identify citizens’ perceptions of the effects of administrative corruption on their lives. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with 15 citizens living in Tehran, Iran, recruited through the convenience sampling method. Two main themes emerged from the data: Negative individual consequences (including “negative emotional consequences”, “negative motivational consequences”, “negative moral and behavioural consequences” and “negative economic consequences”) and Negative collective consequences (including “negative consequences related to family formation and stability” and “negative social consequences”). The study reveals that participants have experienced or perceived adverse effects in the personal, family and social spheres as a result of administrative corruption. The impacts of corruption on people's lives can be taken into consideration when explaining the importance and necessity of designing and implementing preventive measures and policies aimed at reducing corrupt behaviours in public agents.