Chau-kiu Cheung

City University of Hong Kong | CityU · Department of Applied Social Studies

Reciprocal effects between life satisfaction and help expectancy or predicted help in the future are plausible but obscure and debatable theoretically and empirically. The plausibility rests on exchange theory regarding satisfaction and help as exchangeable favors. However, help expectancy, largely empirically uncharted, can signify social demand a...

Introduction Research on heterogeneous pathways in school‐to‐work transitions (SWT), particularly longitudinal research, has been limited, as have empirical studies examining effective interventions for facilitating multiple SWT pathways among non‐engaged youth (NEY), who are generally at risk of being not in education, employment, or training (NEE...

Social influence through awareness of law abidance and enforcement is uncertain in preventing youth radicalism. Accordingly, the effects of the social norm for law abidance and deterrence on radicalism are unclear or debatable. To clarify these effects, this study randomly surveyed 883 Chinese youth in Hong Kong, where the national security law has...

Purpose: This study evaluated the effectiveness of a training program for social workers who provide services for promoting the career and life development (CLD) of non-engaged youth (NEY). Methods: A quasi-experimental design was utilized to compare the changes between the training ( n = 58) and the comparison groups ( n = 48). Focus groups and in...

Controversies ring about the impacts of housing welfare on people’s responsibility and morale to help themselves and others. On the one hand, exchange theory predicts that receiving public welfare triggers responsibility to raise morale for returning favors to the public. On the other hand, the reception may weaken responsibility and morale through...

There is debate over whether following state laws helps young people, especially those at risk for social exclusion, find meaning in their lives. The help rests on existentialist and terror management theories, which hold that maintaining security, especially when it is under risk, is meaningful to life. However, alternative views that state law is...

The contributions of people’s morale as a future-oriented quality of life through their intergenerational respect and support for the societal system to furnish democracy, freedom, law, order, and prosperity rather than opposition to government is plausible but questionable and uncharted. Their plausibility rests on structural-functionalist theory...

The call for articles for the Special Issue of Healthcare, entitled “Social Media and Adolescents’ Well-Being”, was proposed at the beginning of 2021 as part of multidisciplinary efforts to understand the complex interactions between social media usage and adolescents’ well-being [...]

Although it has been widely acknowledged that hope, career competency, and outcomes of social well-being (i.e., social integration, social contribution, and civic engagement) are key components of youth’s career and life development (CLD), those interrelationships, their predictive relationships, and the relative importance of the variables in the...

Parental nurturing, including maternal and paternal caring and discussing ethics, is likely to predict violence perpetration in the youth negatively. This prediction stands on social bond theory, which specifies that parents and their bonding are crucial to curb violence perpetration. Nevertheless, the prediction is unclear from adolescence to youn...

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people are likely to be at risk of distress because of social exclusion, including the feelings of resentment, resistance, and rejection they might experience from society. Nevertheless, the conditions for social exclusion leading to changes in distress are empirically unclear, especially in Chinese LGB people. To e...

In our study, aimed at examining the effectiveness and impact of the Hong Kong Benchmarks (Community) Pilot Program, a career and life development (CLD) intervention program targeting non-engaged youth (NEY) in Hong Kong, we employed a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design to compare changes in career-related competencies between a pilot group...

The growing emphasis on demonstrating the effectiveness of social services through evaluation has heightened demand for nongovernmental organization (NGO) practitioners to enhance evaluation capacity. However, a lack of validated instruments in the NGO context has hampered efforts to assess NGO practitioners’ current evaluation capacity and underst...

According to significance quest theory, radicalism arises from a deficit in life meaningfulness. However, radicalism springs from life meaningfulness, according to meaning maintenance and other principles in existentialist How life meaningfulness predicts radicalism is thus a research question. This study addresses the question with a survey of 4,3...

Increasing career and life development hope (CLDH) is critical for the career and life pursuits of non-engaged youths (NEY) who face various disadvantages in the school-to-work transition, especially considering current challenging labor market conditions and the impacts of the pandemic. Nevertheless, research that explores the assessment of CLDH a...

While both life satisfaction and participation in protest occupying public or private places are crucial, their relationships are uncharted and uncertain. Nevertheless, conflict theory suggests that conflict over sociopolitical class interests triggered by protest participation is dissatisfying (Freelon et al. 2018; E. Liu 2010). In examining this...

Facilitating elders’ volunteerism, which comprises motivation and practice to help people formally, is beneficial to the elders and their volunteering beneficiaries. According to social–cognitive theory, such facilitation supposedly benefits from art training to raise elders’ artistic efficacy. This study examines such a supposition with a two-wave...

Deradicalization

National and local identifications among the youth are likely to increase and reduce, respectively, following personal and societal losses experienced due to the localist riot. The localist riot occurs as an opposition to the nation or its regional government, such as that in Hong Kong. According to exchange theory, such riot losses are likely to c...

Purpose: Despite the growing interest in program evaluation capacity building (PECB), its impacts have been rarely studied in the existing literature. This study aims to evaluate a PECB initiative in Hong Kong called the Jockey Club MEL Institute Project. Methods: A pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design was adopted to compare the changes betwe...

The challenging labor market conditions concomitant with economic globalization and advanced technology have made youth career development competency (YCDC)—young people’s ability to navigate transitions through education into productive and meaningful employment—especially important. The present study aims to develop a holistic instrument to measu...

While it is well-established that mutual aid groups are effective in the psychological rehabilitation of vulnerable individuals, few studies have thoroughly investigated the dynamic mechanism of how psychological well-being improves through mutual aid groups of young patients with chronic health conditions. In connection with several existing theor...

Although work-related stress among police officers during the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has been examined in recent studies, empirical studies of the impacts of multiple stressors on police officers’ work engagement and performance during this difficult time have been scarce. Using data collected from a sample of 335 police officers in Hong...

The contribution of social capital or social connections with friends for accessing resources to achievement such as reaching goals in life among people is unclear. This is possible because the contribution depends on different combinations of social capital components. One possibility is combining both the structural and functional components of s...

While trust has been widely identified as a vital protective factor for individuals’ well-being, less attention has been paid to the particularized trust of mutual aid group members and its impact on the self-management and well-being of young patients with chronic illness (PWCIs). The present study aims to explore the effect of trust in mutual aid...

Although work stress, turnover intention, and work–family conflicts among police officers have been extensively investigated, no studies have explored these issues simultaneously under the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Clearly, both work and family domains have been drastically affected by this global health crisis, and it is likely that eac...

The cost of crime to the public, as a public concern, requires an estimation pertinent to the context, considering substantial contextual variation. Meanwhile, the estimation needs to address issues about feasibility and validity. To address the issues, the present study exemplifies the estimation with both official accounting and tripartite willin...

Exchange theory suggests that social unfairness, including conflict and inequality experienced locally at both personal and neighbourhood levels, reduces social trust generally. To test these uncharted suggestions, the present study analysed two-wave panel survey data on a representative national sample of 25,618 Chinese adults. Results demonstrate...

This book introduces psychosocial studies of idol worship in Chinese societies. It reviews how idol worship is perceived in Chinese culture, history, and philosophy as well as how it differs from the concept of celebrity worship that is more dominant in Western literature. Using a pioneering hexagonal model of idol worship, this book explains how i...

Cross-border travel from one administrative region to another is increasingly prevalent with escalating development in transportation. The travel, such as that from Hong Kong to Mainland China, is conducive to socioeconomic development in places concerned. For promoting travel and development, a review of existing work suggests enhancing cross-bord...

This study aims to examine the mechanism of how supportive interaction and facilitator input variety in mutual aid groups impact treatment adherence of young people with chronic health conditions, with consideration of time effects, which have been rarely studied in the existing literature. A stratified random sample of 391 individuals aged 12–45 y...

Chapter 6 concludes with insights and implications derived from the study. The insights gained concern the homeostasis of well-being and moderation effects of Chinese characteristics. The homeostasis registers the negative effects of contextual well-being indicators on other well-being indicators at the personal level. This sets a brake on the grow...

Chapter 3 reviews personal background influences on well-being, given the regional influences. The background includes the gender, age, year of study, family income, dating status, siblings, and college status and size of the Chinese college student. Among them, the year of study showed a weak positive contribution to overall perceptual well-being....

Chapter 5 discusses the effects of personal dispositions on personal well-being, given the effects of other factors. Most dispositions significantly contributed to well-being. Among them, optimism, affiliative humor, and gratitude turned out to have strong contributions. Dialecticism and creativity showed moderate contributions. Future orientation,...

Chapter 2 discusses regional influences on well-being. Such regions, in the Chinese context, include Mainland China, its special administrative region comprising Hong Kong and Macau, and Taiwan. These regions each have their demographic, cultural, community, economic, and political characteristics affecting personal well-being. As such, the charact...

Self-help organizations (SHOs) enable patients with chronic health conditions (PCHCs) to overcome common difficulties through the exchange of knowledge and mutual assistance, which serves as the basis for promoting the self-reliance and well-being of PCHCs. Nevertheless, practical challenges persist because little is known about what and how to eva...

According to the self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation is very essential for adolescents’ development as it can yield many positive outcomes. Therefore, this study focuses on rural adolescents’ intrinsic motivation, an issue that has not received sufficient attention in previous studies. This study also considers the effects of the natura...

The current study examined the relationships among work support, role stress, work-family conflict, and life satisfaction, with a sample of social workers in China’s Pearl River Delta (N = 1414). Using structure equation modelling, the study revealed that social workers’ life satisfaction reduced because of role conflict and work-family conflicts....

As youth’s national identity or adopting the nation as the identity is a public concern, arranging them to study in school and know about national culture and history is a supposed strategy. However, critics contend that the study is boring, unintellectual, and thus detrimental. To resolve the controversy over the study, this empirical study analys...

The increasing prevalence of early-onset chronic illnesses is a major global health challenge. Effective chronic illness self-management (CISM) is crucial in improving the quality of life of patients. This study aims to develop a holistic instrument to measure CISM among the young patient population in Hong Kong, which has rarely been investigated...

This study was to develop an 18-item Brief Wisdom Development Scale, based on the original 66-item Wisdom Development Scale, and evaluate the psychometric properties of the proposed scale using a sample of older adults. This longitudinal study recruited 153 community-dwelling adults (mean = 72.55 years old; SD = 8.47) from older adult service centr...

Objectives The contribution of parental gratitude to the adolescent’s hope is plausible in light of social integration theory but empirically unverified. According to the theory, parental gratitude facilitates an integrative social environment for the adolescent to sustain hope. The theory also suggests that the adolescent’s anomie or normlessness,...

Background: This longitudinal study aimed to develop a nine-item Brief Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (BSAWS) derived from the original 40-item Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS). Methods: The psychometric properties of the shortened scale were evaluated based on a sample of 157 older adults. The factor structure and dimensionality of the original SA...

While participation in occupying protest is publicly remarkable, its impact on participants’ approval of government, is empirically uncharted. Meanwhile, current research and theory have not been consistent about the impacts of protest participation specifically and civic engagement generally. As the impacts are particularly of concern to college e...

Clarifying conditions for advancing volunteers’ cohesion toward society (i.e., social cohesion), which means attachment to and benefiting society, is relevant to the mission of voluntary organizations. Such clarification is necessary in face of contradictory views between the reinforcement and empowerment models. Specifically, the reinforcement mod...

Background: This longitudinal study aimed to develop a nine-item Brief Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (BSAWS) derived from the original 40-item Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS). Methods: The psychometric properties of the shortened scale were evaluated based on a sample of 157 older adults. The factor structure and dimensionality of the original SAWS...

This study aims to demonstrate how grounded theory can be used to explore and analyze negotiation processes between self-identified gay men and lesbians and their parents. For a majority of Chinese gay men and lesbians, marriage proves to be the primary concern that drives negotiations with parents. Extant research documents the precarious conseque...

In China, the correlation between environmental space and drug use by gay male sex workers remains an under-researched public health concern. Drugs are commonly used to enhance sexual performance as well as provide feelings of euphoria but they also increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. The spatial and environmental factors...

Background This longitudinal study aimed to develop a nine-item Brief Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (BSAWS) derived from the original 40-item Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS). Methods The psychometric properties of the shortened scale were evaluated based on a sample of 157 older adults. The factor structure and dimensionality of the original SAWS we...

The fit between a pupil and his or her classmates in the negative mood means that the mood is similarly high or low in the pupil and classmates. This fit is likely to impede depression (in terms of depressive symptoms) and sustain creativity in the pupil, according to ecological or person-environment fit theory. Such possibilities, nevertheless, ar...

This study examines the ways that social capital sustains flourishing among rural Chinese children, including left-behind children (LBC). Social capital combines structural, substantive, and functional components. Data came from a survey of 995 children in rural areas of China. Results show that LBC experienced significantly lower flourishing and s...

At a personal level, creativity exhibited significant correlations with the majority of other dispositions and feelings. However, analysis of reciprocal effects revealed that creativity received significant positive effects from gratitude, religion value, and self-esteem, and significant negative effects from optimism, study value, and just world b...

Contextual factors comprise factors aggregated for 10 Chinese regions and 52 colleges within the regions. The majority of these factors made a significant difference in the student’s creativity. Nevertheless, after the control for personal factors, only regional creativity, college creativity, college laxity, and college optimism maintained signifi...

The effectiveness of help received from home care workers and volunteers to the life satisfaction of community-dwelling older adults is vital but uncharted. To address the effectiveness, this study aims to optimize the use of social resources for the older adults’ life quality. The study thus surveyed 398 community-dwelling older adults in a city o...

Given the need for more research to uphold the generalizability of the contribution of wisdom to personal well-being (self-esteem and life satisfaction) among older adults, studying that the contribution holds in the Chinese society of Hong Kong is helpful. As such, the study applied a model based on cognitive-developmental theory to understand the...

Although researchers widely use the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) to measure parenting behaviour in terms of parental care and overprotection, its development using Western samples has cast doubt on its applicability among non-Western ones. In response, we examined psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the PBI by using survey data c...

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of meaning making in the relationship between intimacy and complicated grief among bereaved elders. A sample of 352 bereaved elders in rural China participated in the study. Both the linear and quadratic effects of meaning making illustrated a model that mediated the effect of intimacy on complicate...

This study seeks to contrast absorption-addiction idolatry and identification-emulation idolatry. Whereas absorption-addiction idolatry progresses from entertainment/socializing to personalizing and obsession about the idol, identification-emulation idolatry unfolds in terms of identification, attachment, romantization, idealization, and consumptio...

Marital liberalization in terms of public support for polygamous, underage or child, and consanguineous or close-kin marriages emerges to be controversial and requires more understanding. A possible understanding is that such liberalization is unconventional and thus impedes integration with society. According to this social integration vision, mar...

Purpose Encouraging college students to volunteer is a supposed but uncharted way to contribute to their career commitment. Clarifying the ways of the contribution is therefore necessary. From the social capital perspective, volunteering and network density among friends represent social capital to reinforce each other. Thus, enhancement of the co...

Objective: The study aims to determine if and how pet availability and engagement predicted depression in older adults. The prediction can be unconditional or independent of the sociodemographic characteristics of the older adult and/or conditional or dependent on the characteristics. These predictions rest on the contribution of resources pooled f...

The usual but untested assumption is that the employer’s concern about the foreign domestic worker buttresses the worker’s life quality. To clarify how the assumption fares, this study analysed data from a survey of 1514 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, China. Results revealed that, contrary to the usual assumption, the employer’s concern for...

The effectiveness of police disciplining and social work counseling in preventing offending of at-risk youth has been unclear. For elucidating the prevention regarding theft and fighting, this study analyzes 1702 retrospective event history cases from 297 at-risk youths identified in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai. Herein, the event history ref...

Adolescents’ loss of hope due to delinquency is a key to help them desist from delinquency. An explanation for the loss comes from social integration theory, which suggests that parental regard and teachers’ regard for the girl mediate the effect of delinquency on the girl’s hope. Regarding the explanation, the study surveyed 622 girls engaged in y...

Desistance as a process to forgo delinquent habits is an important target for intervention into youth at risk of delinquency. The intervention through social work services, nevertheless, has not clearly demonstrated its effectiveness. For such a demonstration, the present study examines the contribution of social work services with reference to the...

Transactional sex through so-called compensated dating in adolescent girls is a problem in need of public concern. Compensated dating typically involves the use of information communication technology to advertise, search, bargain, and eventually arrange for transactional sex. The technology enables the sexual partners to maintain privacy and secre...

How helpful legal punishment and neighbor help are in preventing parents' physical child abuse in the real-life setting has been uncertain and suspicious. The question is of concern considering prevailing advocacy for preventing child abuse in the community. To address this question, the study examines the preventive effects with a survey of 1956 h...

Compensated dating (CD) has emerged as a global concern since the 1990s. Although considerable empirical research has been conducted to assess the patterns of and factors influencing CD, limited information is currently available on the attitudes of guardians (e.g., social workers, police officers, parents of students, and community representatives...

Authoritative parenting provided by the parent and received by the child offers support and demand to socialize the child, possibly in terms of the performance of taking others’ perspectives and self-esteem. Nevertheless, when the child receives less authoritative parenting than the parent claims to provide, a discrepancy in authoritative parenting...

Whether or not at-risk youth eschew illicit drugs because of its expected harm remains uncertain. In theory, expectancy is influential when the harm is valuable to the youth. Hence, to examine this possibility, this study employed a prospective design to collect data from 169 at-risk youths identified by social workers in Hong Kong, China. Finding...

This article presents public discourses on compensated dating of adolescent girls in Chinese society. Data are obtained from eight focus groups comprising 50 guardians at private, parochial, and public levels (i.e., social workers, police officers, parents of students, and community representatives). Qualitative data are used to demonstrate how the...

A way that education is desirable is its integrative function for society and its sectors, according to structural-functionalist theory. This function consists in the promotion of the student’s belongingness to society and its sectors. In consolidating empirical support for the function, this present study analyses survey data on 417 students in Ho...

As social work is an international profession, it is necessary to establish the validity of assessment of the field practicum of students for the purpose of professional accreditation. This study calibrates an indigenous assessment tool, the Social Work Practicum Assessment (SWPA), developed in Hong Kong with a competency-based evaluation (CBE) too...

As entrepreneurs, professionals, and cadres constitute the middle tier in China, they exhibit extravagance, gifting, and the pursuit of privileges. Particularly, privileges are likely to stem from political-economic coalition within the middle tier. The coalition is also likely to favor the preservation of the political structure. All these feature...

Social services often organize volunteer work to achieve social well-being, such as building volunteer trust in various people. Meanwhile, a vital goal for the organizing is the development of volunteer identity, such that volunteers identify themselves with volunteering. Volunteer identity is supposed to maintain reciprocal effects with social tru...

This study examined level of happiness and contributing factors among university students in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taipei. A total of 812 undergraduate participated in this study (including 177 from Sun Yat-Sen University, 267 from The City University of Hong Kong, 182 from Macao University of Science and Technology, and 186 from Taiwan...

The nurturing culture in the organization means the common practices of attention, recognition, and appreciation about employees’ skill, performance, and work and life quality in the workplace. To clarify the contributions of the culture and their variations among employees, the study surveyed 765 employees in all the 14 work units of a social serv...

Promoting the prosocial behavior of young people is desirable. The individual counseling sessions held in schools and in youth centers can effectively promote prosocial behavior among the youth. Given the lack of relevant research on this topic, this study aims to examine how individual counseling in a natural setting contributes to the formation o...

With the variation of resources and norms in society, the effects of resources and norms on the well-being of individuals are likely to change. People’s age, education, family income, religiosity, voluntary organizational membership, and even protest participation can be considered resources and can maintain fits to local and global liberal norms....