The first edition of The Human Quest for Meaning was a major publication on the empirical research of meaning in life and its vital role in well-being, resilience, and psychotherapy. This new edition continues that quest and seeks to answer the questions, what is the meaning of life? How do we explain what constitutes meaningful relationships, work, and living? The answers, as the eminent scholars and practitioners who contributed to this text find, are neither simple nor straightforward. While seeking to clarify subjective vs. objective meaning in 21 new and 7 revised chapters, the authors also address the differences in cultural contexts, and identify 8 different sources of meaning, as well as at least 6 different stages in the process of the search for meaning. They also address different perspectives, including positive psychology, self-determination, integrative, narrative, and relational perspectives, to ensure that readers obtain the most thorough information possible. Mental health practitioners will find the numerous meaning-centered interventions, such as the PURE and ABCDE methods, highly useful in their own work with facilitating healing and personal growth in their clients. The Human Quest for Meaning represents a bold new vision for the future of meaning-oriented research and applications. No one seeking to truly understand the human condition should be without it.

Parenting adolescents is a challenging task for parents. Professionals offer a range of support and parenting programmes to support parents. However, the importance of culturally adapting parenting programmes to benefit parents and their adolescent children hasn’t always been understood. This book provides a comparison of East and West parenting approaches and parenting programmes to show how vital a culturally sensitive approach is to the positive development of the parent-adolescent relationship. It offers a comprehensive overview of current theories and research on parenting adolescents. It focuses on comparing the differences in parenting style and practice between Chinese parents and their Western counterparts and the policy context in Chinese culture with that in the West. It also offers guidance on how to conduct an evaluation of parenting programmes and how to adapt them for the right cultural setting. Postgraduate students studying parenting, developmental psychology or social work will find this work particularly useful, as will researchers in any of these areas.

This study offers the results of quantitative research investigating the impact of perceived academic support from parents, teachers and peers on students' academic achievement, using a sample group from a secondary school in Hong Kong as a case study. This work should appeal to scholars interested in education and Asian studies. quantitative study testing the hypothesis that Hong Kong students' self-perceived academic support is related to their achievement. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that the students' perceived levels of parental, teacher, and peer support were all indirectly related to their academic achievement mediated by their own perceived academic engagement. In addition, both perceived parental support and perceived teacher support were also directly related to academic achievement, demonstrating that student achievement was a combined outcome of both direct and indirect effects of perceived support from parents and teachers. contribution to student achievement. Perceived peer support had the smallest, nonetheless significant, indirect relationship to academic achievement. This study also revealed important gender differences as well as grade-level differences in the relationships of perceived academic support from parents, teachers, and peers to academic achievement directly and indirectly through perceived academic engagement.

Publisher description

This book documents the findings of a 3-year longitudinal study on the quality of family life, personal well-being and risk behavior in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. It presents the profiles of quality of family life (family functioning, parental behavioral control, parental psychological control and parent-child relational qualities); personal well-being (positive youth development and life satisfaction measures) and adolescent risk behavior (substance abuse, delinquency, self-harm and suicidal behavior and behavioral intentions to engage in risk behavior) in different adolescent populations across time. It also examines theoretical issues concerning the interrelationships between family quality of life, psychological well-being and risk behavior in adolescents. Practically speaking, the findings can help youth workers appreciate the importance of family quality of life and positive youth development in shaping the personal well-being and risk behavior in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong.