Bente Wold

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Verified

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• PhD
• Professor at University of Bergen

Background Health behaviors have been posited to partly explain the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health (i.e., the behavioral explanation of health inequalities), yet few studies have examined whether health behaviors serve as pathways from adolescent SES to adult depressive symptoms. This study aimed to explore the effects of...

The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study is a large cross-national research study, conducted in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO). The study has surveyed young people aged 11, 13 and 15 years every 4 years since the mid-1980s and has grown to include 50 countries across Europe, North America, and Western-Central...

Purpose This study investigated the relationship between teacher autonomy support, students’ basic psychological needs satisfaction, and involvement in physical education (PE) with gender specific analyses. Additionally, the study examined the validity of a Norwegian version of the Basic Psychological Needs in PE (BPN-PE) scale. Method Survey data...

Studies taking a person-centred statistical approach when examining young peoples` psychological experiences in sport is scarce. The main aim of the present study was to examine the relationships between young football players’ psychological health resources and the psychological quality of their football-specific experiences. Data for this cross-s...

Background Few studies have considered the life-course development of depressive symptoms in relation to life transitions in early-adulthood and whether these might affect depressive trajectories differently depending on specific indicators of parental socioeconomic status (SES). In the present work, we explore these questions using the adolescent...

Introduction Applying variable-centered analytical approaches, several studies have found an association between civic engagement and youth mental health. In the present study, we used a person-centered approach to explore whether civic engagement was related to optimal trajectories of mental health compared to other trajectories. We also examined...

Background Adolescence is regarded as formative years for building the foundations for life-long health and well-being, and adolescent determinants of physical activity (PA) development is particularly interesting. Novel approaches for the study of PA development, such as group-based trajectory modelling, opens for the possibility of identifying di...

Highlights •Adolescent depressed mood predicts adult depressed mood. •Peer acceptance during adolescence is not associated with adult depressed mood. •Household income moderates the effect of parental closeness on adult depressed mood.

Background: Insufficient physical activity (PA) levels among adolescents and adults make promoting PA a public health priority. Although most people exhibit low or decreasing levels of PA, other groups increase or maintain high levels of activity. These different groups may engage differently in activity domains during their leisure time. This stu...

The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance (across five languages, two time points, and two experimental conditions) of the empowering and disempowering motivational climate questionnaire-coach (EDMCQ-C; Appleton et al., 2016) when completed by 9256 young sport participants (M age = 11.53 years, SD = 1.39 years; 13.5% female)....

Background Few studies have looked at how life transitions influence depressed mood from adolescence to adulthood and if parental socioeconomic status (SES) moderates these effects. Study questions Methods We used latent growth modelling to analyze depressed mood in a Norwegian sample (n = 1257) surveyed at age 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 30...

In the context of the contemporary emphasis on the school’s role in supporting student wellbeing, this qualitative study explored the teachers’ experience of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme, which focused on enhancing teachers’ emotional awareness within the context of everyday life. An implicit assumption in this approach is...

Introduction Straightlining, or identical responses across all items within a multi‐item scale, is often taken as an indication that responses to all items in a questionnaire are of poor quality. The purpose of this study was to examine straightlining on two scales: The Sense of Unity Scale (SUS) and the short version of the Warwick‐Edinburgh Menta...

Background Psychological distress among young people is increasing in Northern Europe. According to established healthcare utilization theory, this will create a greater need for youth primary healthcare and subsequently lead to more help-seeking behavior by distressed young people. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between t...

Little is known about the role of teachers in fostering wellbeing in the everyday context of school life. This paper explores the phenomenon among a sample of Norwegian teachers. Focus groups with 23 teachers in four schools (grades 1–10) in Norway were conducted. In the analysis of the findings three themes were developed: 1) fostering student wel...

Among adults, there is solid evidence of socioeconomic inequalities in health, with regard to both objective measures (such as mortality and morbidity) and subjective measures (such as self-rated health, health complaints, well-being, and health behaviors). Socioeconomic inequalities denote a range of differences in socioeconomic status (SES) linke...

Background Psychological distress among young people is increasing in Northern Europe. According to established healthcare utilization theory, this will create a greater need for youth primary healthcare and subsequently lead to more help-seeking behavior by distressed young people. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between...

Background The link between parental divorce and adolescents’ academic achievement may depend on parental educational levels. However, findings have been inconsistent regarding whether the negative associations between parental divorce and adolescents’ academic outcomes are greater or smaller in highly educated families. The present study aimed to...

Background Psychological distress among young people is increasing in Northern Europe. According to established healthcare utilization theory, this will create a greater need for youth primary healthcare and subsequently lead to more help-seeking behavior by distressed young people. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between t...

The detrimental effects of exposure to bullying behaviors at work on employees’ mental health have been thoroughly documented. However, few studies have examined whether employees’ prior experiences with bullying may affect the strength of this relationship. The present study tested a model where victimization from bullying in adolescence was expec...

The present study examined the psychometric properties of the coach-adapted version of the Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire (EDMCQ) using Bayesian structural equation modelling (BSEM). The sample included 780 (Mage = 36.4; SD = 10.8; males n = 698; females n = 54; 28 participants did not report sex) youth sport coache...

Participation in organized sports is a popular and important part of the lives of children and adolescents, and is associated with improved psychological and social health, as well as an increased likelihood of meeting physical activity recommendations. Changes in modern society, including increased car ownership and use of technology and electroni...

Background Identifying factors that can influence young peoples’ physical activity and sedentary behaviors is important for the development of effective interventions. The family structure in which children grow up may be one such factor. As the prevalence of single parent and reconstituted families have increased substantially over the last decade...

Purpose Examine time trends in health complaints among adolescents in Norway between 1994 and 2014 and among population subgroups, e.g., age and gender, as well as their interactions. Methods Norwegian data on 11-16-year-olds were drawn from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey (HBSC) and analyzed for 1994 (n = 4,952), 1998 (n = 5,0...

Background: Early adulthood is a period associated with poor diet and rapid weight gain. This is also an age of transition, including environmental, social and lifestyle changes which may be associated with changes in diet. We assess longitudinal associations between four early adulthood life transitions (leaving home, leaving education, entering...

This study investigated the relationships between perceptions of coach autonomy support, basic psychological need satisfaction and the frequency at which youth soccer players engage in additional soccer activity outside of team sessions. We employed structural equation modelling to test a two-wave (T1 and T2) half-longitudinal study to see if basic...

Background. Early adulthood is a period associated with poor diet and rapid weight gain. This is also an age of transition, including environmental, social and lifestyle changes which may be associated with changes in diet. We assess longitudinal associations between four early adulthood life transitions (leaving home, leaving education, entering e...

Background. Early adulthood is a period associated with poor diet and rapid weight gain. This is also an age of transition, including environmental, social and lifestyle changes which may be associated with changes in diet. We assess longitudinal associations between four early adulthood life transitions (leaving home, leaving education, entering e...

Aims: This debate paper traces the development of innovative methods for undertaking health promotion research with a socialecological orientation, with a few examples drawn from 30 years of research on adolescent health promotion research at the University of Bergen. Conclusion: We aim to show how the social-ecological model is becoming more ev...

The aim of this study was to examine the association between family structure and adolecent mental health, after the considerable increase in divorced parents choosing joint physical custody (JPC) in Norway. Data stem from the youth@hordaland study, a population-based survey conducted in Norway in 2012. A total of 7,707 adolescents (47% male) 16 to...

This study explores grassroots coaches’ (GCs’) perceptions of the content of a one-day coach education workshop, the programme’s applicability, their use of the content, and the perceived barriers to implementing the programme in their coaching practice. One hundred and thirteen GCs completed follow-up questionnaires, while 12 of them were also int...

This study seeks to identify factors that promote positive experiences in high school physical education (PE). The study combines elements of Self-determination Theory (SDT) with the theory of flow. Special attention is given to gender differences. The study sample consisted of 167 Norwegian senior high school students (78 females and 89 males) who...

Inspired by the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic feeling states, we examined the distinction between feelings of pleasure and interest as well as subsequent motivation related to participation in outdoor events among students of physical education (n = 64) in a Norwegian university college. The students reported on their experiences durin...

Based on nine waves of data collected during a period of 17 years (1990–2007), the present study explored different developmental trajectories of the following unhealthy behaviors: regular smoking, lack of regular exercise, lack of daily fruit intake, and drunkenness. A baseline sample of 1195 13-year-old pupils was from 22 randomly selected school...

Introduction and aims: Adolescence is a period in which many have an onset of alcohol use, but there is much heterogeneity in the individual development of alcohol use. Further, there is a general increase in depressive symptoms from early to late adolescence, but less is known about how different alcohol habit trajectories are associated with sym...

This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the experiences of adolescents in Norwegian soccer teams. The sample included players aged 12–14 years who participated in the promoting adolescence physical activity (PAPA) project. The data were generated by twelve focus groups with seven girls’ teams and five boys’ teams and indicated tha...

This study cross-culturally compares the implementation process of the Empowering CoachingTM training program to grassroots coaches (GCs) by trained Coach Educators (CEs) from the Promoting Adolescent Physical Activity project in Norway and France. This program targets children’s health through coach training to create a more positive environment....

Individuals from intact and nonintact families were compared regarding their health-related behavior and physical health problems in a prospective study during a 17-year period throughout adolescence and into young adulthood. A total of 983 respondents were included in the study gathering data at 9 different times from the age of 13 until 30 years...

Purpose. The health promoting benefits of sport participation are under-utilized and should be further developed, particularly at the grassroots level. The aim of this paper is to examine how grassroots coaches in youth football perceive their coaching practices after participating in a community-based coach education program aimed at optimizing th...

Research indicates that the main reason why teachers change their practice is the recognition of improvements in students’ educational outcomes (Guskey TR, Teach Teach 8(3):381—391, 2002). To ensure widespread dissemination of health promoting schools, evidence that the health promoting school approach can be a crucial vehicle for enhancing both st...

Reasons for participating in physical activity (PA) may have changed in accordance with the general modernization of society. The aim is to examine changes in self-reported reasons for liking leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) and their association with self-reported LTPA over a 20-year period. Data were collected among nationally representative...

Study objectives: To assess the direction of the relationship and degree of shared associations between symptoms of depression and difficulty initiating sleep (DIS) from early adolescence to early adulthood. Design: Cross-sectional and longitudinal assessment of the symptoms of depression-DIS association from early adolescence (age 13yr) to early a...

The trajectories and stability of self-reported sleep duration recorded at ages 13, 15, and 23 years on reported sleep duration at age 30 years among 1105 students (55% male) who participated in the Norwegian Longitudinal Health and Behaviour Study were examined. Questionnaire data were used to obtain demographic and sleep variables. Dichotomised s...

The use of electronic media has been found to be a risk factor for higher BMI and for being overweight. Physical activity has been found to be associated with lower BMI and lower risk for being overweight. Little is known about whether the associations between physical activity and electronic media use are additive or interactive in predicting BMI...

The association between depression and smoking is firmly established, but how the association develops remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine development of the smoking-depression association from early adolescence to adulthood. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of the smoking-depression association from adolescence to adulth...

This chapter addresses child well-being from a psychological point of view. In doing so, we need to remember that psychology is not one single discipline but covers a wide range of psychological disciplines from evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics via psychometrics to developmental, cognitive, personality, and social psychology – all of t...

This chapter addresses child well-being from a psychological point of view. In doing so, we need to remember that psychology is not one single discipline but covers a wide range of psychological disciplines from evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics via psychometrics to developmental, cognitive, personality, and social psychology – all of t...

Norway has an extensive welfare system which may provide adolescents with many options and high levels of flexibility in terms of pathways to adulthood. This study aimed to describe Norwegian developmental pathways to adulthood, including changes in role statuses (such as living situations, education, work, marriage/cohabitation and parenthood) fro...

The aim of the study was to examine to what extent young people who play organised soccer rate their leisure-time moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, life satisfaction, and health more positively and higher than a same-aged population-based reference group (including some adolescents who also played organised soccer). Data from two samples of f...

Funded by the European Commission, the Promoting Adolescent health through an intervention is aimed at improving the quality of their participation in Physical Activity (PAPA) project revolved around the potential of youth sport to promote children’s mental and emotional health and physical activity engagement. A theoretically grounded coach educat...

Having a distant relationship with parents seems to increase the risk of developing a more negative global self-esteem. This article describes a longitudinal study of 1,090 Norwegian adolescents from the age of 13-23 (54 % males) that explored whether peer acceptance can act as a moderator and protect global self-esteem against the negative effects...

This paper shows how economic and psychological approaches to explaining why people overeat are based on different basic assumptions about human behaviour. Three such views of human behaviour are distinguished: rational behaviour, reasoned behaviour, and automatic behaviour. Economic approaches, trying to explain behaviour leading to weight gain an...

Aims: Adolescence is considered a critical phase for smoking initiation, while smoking initiation in adulthood has received less attention. In the present study, we investigated smoking initiation in early adulthood, with an additional focus on how socioeconomic status (SES) relates to late-onset smoking. Methods: The Norwegian Longitudinal Heal...

This study explored the extent to which adolescents’ motives for leisure activity participation are related to their perceptions of competence and relatedness in different kinds of activities and aimed to provide new insight into boys’ and girls’ leisure experiences and their motivational orientations for activity participation. These proposed asso...

  Few prospective studies have investigated the impacts of socio-behavioural position throughout adolescence on self-reported oral health in young adulthood. This study aimed to describe the development of oral health behaviours between age 15 years (1992) and age 30 years (2007) and to assess how changes in or stability of socio-behavioural charac...

This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore how the family members of older people who will undergo haemodialysis treatment for the rest of their lives perceive participation. The rights of families to participate in treatment and health care are supported by international law, and by national law in Norway since 1999. This study, which...

The aim of the study was twofold: (1) to examine how psychosocial support provided by teachers and classmates related to students' self-regulated learning as expressed through self-reported academic initiative, and (2) whether academic competence and school satisfaction mediated these relationships. The data were from a nationally representative sa...

Based on data from a 17‐year longitudinal study of 1083 adolescents, from the ages of 13 to 30 years, the average development of self‐reported global self‐esteem was found to be high and stable during adolescence. However, there is considerable inter‐individual variance in baseline and development of global self‐esteem. This study used latent growt...

Wiium, N. & Wold, B. (2011). Actions taken by schools when tobacco policies are violated: Associations with adolescent smoking prevalence. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52 , 494–501. This study examined the association of adolescent smoking prevalence with actions taken by schools (i.e., informing parents or disciplining pupils at school) for...

The aim of this study was to examine how program leaders in the Norwegian Network of Health Promoting Schools managed, facilitated, and supported the development and implementation of the health promotion initiatives at their school. Two focus group interviews were conducted with 10 program leaders. The findings suggest that the implementation of t...

The aim of this study was to examine how perceived support provided by teachers and classmates in the school class environment related to students' academic initiative. Data were from a stratified sample of 13-year-old students (n=1591) from the Norwegian part of the World Health Organization's survey of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HB...

In Australia and the USA, national guidelines exist for limiting children's screen-exposure to two hours per day. This study aims to determine whether exceeding the suggested guidelines for screen-based sedentary behavior is associated with reduced levels of physical activity across different geographical regions. Data material were taken from the...

Percentage of adolescents who exceed 2 hrs daily of screen based sedentary behaviors and mean levels of Physical activity across countries, age and gender

The aim of this study was to investigate conditions related to teacher participation in the planning and implementation of the Norwegian part of the European Network of Health Promoting Schools. One hundred and four teachers responded to the questionnaire at baseline and at three year follow-up. Teachers' personal interest and regard for the progra...

The aim of the present study was to simultaneously examine the effect of factors related to school, leisure, family and the individual on adolescent smoking. These determining factors occupy the micro- and mesosystems of Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory. Data were collected using questionnaires from a nationally representative sample of 15-year-o...

In this study, we examined the sustainability of health-promoting practices in Norwegian schools that were enrolled in the European Network of Health-Promoting Schools from 1993 to 2003. The research questions were: How do the principals perceive that health-promoting practices have been sustained in the schools following the schools' membership of...

This study examined the relationship between participation in organized youth sport and attitude to physical education (PE) during adolescence and physical activity in young adulthood. The sample comprised 630 participants who completed questionnaires over a 10-year period. Analysis of variance and regression were used to examine the relationship b...

The authors examined the effect of school-related social support from teachers, classmates, and parents on students' life satisfaction that school satisfaction, scholastic competence, and general self-efficacy, respectively, mediated. The authors based the analyses on data from a nationally representative sample of 13- and 15-year-old students (N =...

Teachers' participation in health promotion was studied in Norwegian schools involved in the European Network of Health Promoting Schools. The study examined how teachers' motivation was related to participation in health promoting activities. The sample consisted of 104 teachers surveyed in 1994 and 1997. The teachers reported high motivation in t...

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine and test the possible directions of the relationships between leisure-time physical activity and depressed mood. Method: A 10-year longitudinal study with a sample of 924 adolescents was conducted, and data were collected 8 times from the age of 13 years to the age of 23 years. The data were analysed...

The purpose of this study was to show how participation in leisure-time physical activity changes between ages 13 to 23, and to what extent engaging in specific types of sports tracks into young adulthood. The sample comprised 630 subjects who responded to questionnaires at age 13, with seven follow-ups over a 10-year period in the Norwegian Longit...

The aim of this study was to examine whether early and sustained organized youth sport during childhood and adolescence predicts the frequency of leisure-time physical activity (PA) at age 23 years. A 10-year longitudinal study of 630 adolescents was conducted. Data were collected from these participants eight times from the ages of 13 to 23 years...

The aim is to study trends in physical activity and TV viewing in seven European countries in the period 1985-2002. The data are collected through questionnaires in the survey 'Health Behaviour in School-aged Children. A WHO Cross-national study', using nationally representative samples of 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds. Between 1985/86 and 2001/02, a...

Within a health promotion perspective, nationwide surveys on health behaviour and lifestyle in 11- to 15-year-old schoolchildren were carried out in Finland, Norway and Sweden in 1985–1986. The surveys were part of an international World Health Organization study on health behaviour in school-age children. The findings suggest that social, fun and...

Purpose This paper aims to examine how influences at home and school interact to predict smoking among adolescents. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 15‐year‐old pupils from Norway ( n =1,404 in 73 Grade 10 school classes). Multilevel logistic regression analysis was used to determine how family and school influences interact to...

The study examines how adolescents’ perceptions of exposure to smoker role models relate to their intentions to smoke, both directly, and indirectly through attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioural control. The data is based on a national representative sample of 15-year-olds (n=1670) in Norway. Path analysis indicates that perceptions of model...

Currently, smoking prevalence is still high among adolescents. This is of major concern for public health organizations. Factors that influence adolescent smoking behaviour need to be identified and addressed. Research in this area has identified attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control as some of the contributing factors, but...

Parents are believed to play a role in influencing their children's health behaviours. This longitudinal study of two generations (parents and their children) examined associations between parents’ self‐reported leisure‐time physical activity changes and the self‐reported physical activity changes of their offspring in a sample of 557 adolescents o...

The present analysis aimed to describe the degree of tracking of physical activity over an 8-year follow-up period among a cohort of 557 adolescents in western Norway (13 years of age at baseline). Frequency and time spent in leisure-time physical activity were assessed at ages 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 and 21 years through self-report questionnaires....

The focus of this article is on examining Norwegian teachers' perception of what factors at the school's organisational level have facilitated their participation in a school‐based health promotion project. The study is based on 12 semistructured interviews with teachers from two of the pilot schools participating in the European Network of Health...

To review and compare national legislation addressing smoking at school in eight European countries during the late 1990s. The data are from the EC-funded Control of Adolescent Smoking (CAS) study in eight European countries. The information on national legislation was gathered during the period 1998-1999, through a review of scientific and officia...

The paper examines the association between restrictions on teacher tobacco smoking at school and student exposure to teachers who smoke during school hours. The data are taken from a European Commission-funded study 'Control of Adolescent Smoking' (the CAS study) in seven European countries. Multilevel modelling analyses were applied to investigate...

This study investigated the relationship between shared psychosocial school environment and subjective health complaints. A representative sample of 1585 Norwegian grade 8 students (mean age 13?5 years) from 82 schoolclasses completed scales on health complaints, academic stress, the teacher and classmate support scale, decision control, and noise...

The present study includes a Norwegian sample of 15-year-old students (N = 1,670) and is part of a World Health Organization cross-national survey, Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (Currie, 1998). The objective was to examine the relationship between school-related stress, leisure time physical activity, and adolescent health complaints. Phy...

This three-wave prospective study investigated the reciprocal relationships among school-related stress, school-related social support, and distress in a cohort of 767 secondary school students (mean age 13.9 years). Stress, support, and distress were measured at three occasions with six-month lags between. Reciprocal relationships were analyzed wi...

Background.Health promotion in Norwegian schools has been given higher priority through participation in «The European Network of Health Promoting Schools» (ENHPS) during 1994–1998. The aim of the present study is to identify how the Norwegian ENHPS project has influenced the collaboration between the school and the school health service.Material a...

This study investigated the relationship between shared psychosocial school environment and subjective health complaints. A representative sample of 1585 Norwegian grade 8 students (mean age 13.5 years) from 82 schoolclasses completed scales on health complaints, academic stress, the teacher and classmate support scale, decision control, and noise...

Health promotion and disease prevention among adolescents should include efforts to reduce the burden of health complaints. In order to develop systematic preventive approaches, epidemiological research is needed. This study focuses on prevalence, gender differences, and intercorrelations among such complaints. The data were drawn from a nationwide...

This paper studies test-retest reliability and validity of one measure of adolescent health complaints. The test-retest included an eight-item symptom checklist developed for the survey of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (n=344). Qualitative analysis showed adequate validity for most items. For the total sample, all items were found to hav...

The role of sense of coherence (SOC) on the relationship between adolescent school-related stress and subjective health complaints was tested with structural equation modelling. As part of the crossnational WHO-survey 'Health behaviour in school-aged children 1997/98' Norwegian representative samples of 1592 grade 6, 1534 grade 8, and 1605 grade 10...

The purpose of this study was to examine whether physical activity moderates the relationship between school related stress and subjective health complaints in a representative sample of adolescents. The data material was based on an international study on "Health Behaviours in school-aged children" (the HBSC study) conducted in collaboration with...

This study examines the relationship between school-related stress, social support from teachers and classmates, and somatic complaints in the general population of Norwegian adolescents. The study was undertaken as part of the World Health Organization’s survey “Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children” (HBSC). A representative sample of 4,952 Nor...

The purpose of this work was to study the prevalence and dimensionality of subjective health complaints in a cross-national population of adolescents. The analyses were based on data from a WHO cross-national survey, Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC). The study included a representative sample of 11, 13 and 15-year-old adolescents fro...