Metin Özdemir

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Örebro University

Schools are crucial socialization contexts where civic norms and values such as appreciating diverse perspectives and embracing differences can be systematically transmitted to the next generations. This process, in turn, can foster the development of more inclusive societies. However, increasing polarized political climate poses a risk for the for...

The current study examined whether bystander behaviours in class were associated with being perpetrators of ethnic victimization and whether they moderated the association between disengagement from morality and perpetrating ethnic-based victimization. The sample included 1065 adolescents residing in Sweden (M age = 13.12, SD=.42; 55% males) from t...

Most evidence-based programs for recently arrived immigrant youth are deficit-oriented. The PIA Youth Program, a strength-based program built on cognitive dissonance-based intervention strategies and a series of qualitative interviews with newly arrived youth, is a six-week, group-based program that aims to promote recently arrived adolescents’ adj...

Using short-term longitudinal data, the primary goal of the present study was to examine the interplay between adolescents’ sports-related intrapersonal (e.g., sports values) and interpersonal factors (e.g., perceived parental involvement) in relation to sports dropout. A secondary goal was to explore the direction of effects in the association bet...

Societal belongingness – feelings of being a connected, an affiliated, and a respected member of the larger society – may contribute to the understand- ing of adolescent development both as a person and a member of society in a multicultural context. The current study examined the psychometric proper- ties and measurement invariance of the Adolesce...

Each year, millions of people worldwide are forced to leave their homes. Many of those affected are families. There are already a considerable number of initiatives designed to support refugees who are resettling in new countries and cultures. However, few are promotive interventions aiming to support parents and thereby their children through the...

Study Objectives We examined how adolescents’ sleep patterns (i.e., insomnia symptoms and sleep duration) change from early- to mid-adolescence and whether adolescents follow different trajectories. Further, we also examined the characteristics of adolescents within different trajectories, with a specific focus on the role of school-related stress....

Study Objectives We examined how adolescents’ sleep patterns (i.e., insomnia symptoms and sleep duration) change from early- to mid-adolescence and whether adolescents follow different trajectories. Further, we also examined the characteristics of adolescents within different trajectories, with a specific focus on the role of school-related stress....

The study examined how adolescents' individual characteristics and class context are related to bystander behaviors in cases of ethnic victimization. The sample included 1065 adolescents in Sweden (Mage = 13.12, SD = 0.42; 55%males). Female adolescents, adolescents of immigrant background, and adolescents with positive attitudes toward immigrants h...

Youth of immigrant background are at risk of experiencing victimization due to their ethnic or cultural background. However, limited knowledge is available regarding why youth victimize their immigrant peers, and whether the factors associated with engagement in ethnic victimization vary across adolescents of different background. To address this g...

The aim of the current study was to assess the components of the intervention program “Aquatic”, targeted at the reduction of bottled water use in adolescence. The Comprehensive Action Determination Model was chosen as a theory of change for the development and evaluation of pro-environmental behavior intervention. We examined the impact of five ex...

The aim of the current study was to assess the components of the intervention program "Aquatic", targeted at the reduction of bottled water use in adolescence. The Comprehensive Action Determination Model was chosen as a theory of change for the development and evaluation of pro-environmental behavior intervention. We examined the impact of five ex...

The present study aims to examine the extent to which adolescents of immigrant background experience acculturative stress (i.e., cultural clashes with parents and ethnic victimization in school) in multiple contexts, and the reasons why such stress takes a toll on their psychological functioning and views of themselves. The analytic sample includes...

Background Drawing on Eccles’ expectancy-value model, we investigated the associations between parents’ sports-related socialization behaviors in the family context, youth’s sports’ values, and youth’s involvement in organized sports activities in the Nordic countries. More specifically, we tested the mediating effect of youth’s sports’ values on t...

The present study examined how teachers respond to ethnic-victimization, and whether teachers’ responses buffer the effect of such aversive encounters on immigrant youth’s psychological adjustment. The sample included youth of immigrant background residing in Sweden (N = 423; Mage = 13.19, SD = .51; 44% girls), and their head class teachers. Cluste...

Young people are growing up in increasingly “super-diverse” societies, and show variations in how they approach diversity and embrace differences. Developing a good understanding of why some youth appreciate and value diversity whereas others do not is crucial in identifying ways to promote social interactions among different groups in broader soci...

Immigrant and minority youth are at risk of ethnic victimization. Despite an increasing number of studies that aim to understand the consequences of such negativity, relatively little attention has been paid to understanding who the perpetrators of ethnic victimization are. To address this gap in knowledge, the present study examined whether youth...

Immigrant and minority youth are at risk of experiencing victimization due to their ethnic, cultural, or religious background. Despite an increasing number of studies that aims at understanding the consequences of being the target of such negative experiences, little attention has been paid to the factors that might counteract the occurrence of eth...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Education is the most central determinant of important life outcomes, from employment to physical and psychological health. Promoting immigrant youth’s education may be the most effective policy measure to promote their well-being and successful adaptation into the host society. Nevertheless, immigrant youth in European countries consistently displ...

The aim of the present study was (a) to investigate the effect of perceived parents’ disapproval of peer relations and perceived parental monitoring on youth’s engagement in organized sports activities, (b) to examine whether youth’s engagement in delinquent behaviors mediates the link between parents’ behaviors and youth’s participation in and dro...

The student-teacher relationship has mostly been assumed to be static. This approach is limited in providing information on how relationships with teachers evolve over time, and how possible changes affect young people’s adjustment. To address this gap in knowledge, the present study examined whether adolescents follow different trajectories in the...

The European Family Support Network (EurofamNet) is a bottom-up, evidence-based, multidisciplinary network funded as an Action (CA18123) under the COST program. EurofamNet aims to inform family policies and practices by reflecting common goals across participating countries, while recognizing the specific nature of families’ cultural and socio-econ...

Background The implementation of preventive interventions is considered a crucial aspect of their success. However, few studies have investigated which components of implementation are most important. Objective We aimed to understand whether the components of implementation integrity—adherence, quality of delivery, dose, and participants’ involvem...

The present study aimed to examine whether ethnic harassment was related to violent behaviors among immigrant youth over time and to identify the risk factors. The sample comprised immigrant adolescents living in Sweden (N = 365; Mage = 13.93, SD = 0.80). Results showed that the more youth were ethnically harassed, the more they engaged in violent...

Introduction: Sleep is a complex behavior affected by biological, psychosocial and contextual factors typically present during adolescent development (Becker, Langberg, & Byars, 2015), including increasing autonomy from parents, increasing school demands, and socializing more with peers. However, these normative changes do not explain temporary vs...

Research on ethnic victimization to date has done little to identify the reasons why adolescents victimize their peers due to their ethnic background. To address this limitation, we examined: (1) the extent to which prejudiced attitudes within adolescents’ close and larger social networks determine their engagement in ethnic harassment, and (2) the...

Teachers are thought to play an important role in fostering youth civic engagement; however, the current literature is limited with regard to providing concrete suggestions as to what teachers can do to promote youth civic engagement and why teachers have an impact on youth. To address these limitations, we simultaneously tested three alternative e...

Using a longitudinal design, we asked 2 age cohorts of adolescents (15- and 18-year-olds) whether they, during the last year, had experienced events that had increased their civic interest and about details of their experiences. Based on self-determination theory, we predicted that the adolescents who reported having experienced events of this kind...

Long-term follow-up studies of selective parent training (PT) programs are scarce, particularly in the case of effectiveness trials conducted within regular care settings. This study evaluated the 2-year effects of 4 programs: Comet, Incredible Years, Cope, and Connect and differences in the rate of change among programs were investigated using Lat...

Past research has shown that, although a majority of citizens in democracies support the idea of democracy as a form of governance, some tend to be distrustful of democratic institutions and express dissatisfaction with the way democracy works. It is argued in this article that to better understand the role of various groups of dissatisfied citizen...

Past research has shown that, although a majority of citizens in democracies support the idea of democracy as a form of governance, some tend to be distrustful of democratic institutions and express dissatisfaction with the way democracy works. It is argued in this article that to better understand the role of various groups of dissatisfied citizen...

Background and AimsThe Örebro Prevention Program (ÖPP) was previously found effective in reducing drunkenness among adolescents (Cohen's d = .35, NNT = 7.7). The current study tested the mediating role of parents' restrictive attitudes to underage drinking in explaining the effectiveness of the ÖPP, and the potential moderating role of gender, immi...

Objectives: Sleep has important consequences for a person's daytime functioning. Numerous studies have shown that insomnia predicts work absenteeism and work disability in adults, but only a few studies have examined this association in adolescents. This study aims to explore whether symptoms of insomnia in adolescents predict school absenteeism 1...

Purpose – Parenting programmes are seen as feasible and cost-effective in preventing early behavioural problems in children and adolescents. A number of studies have concluded that such programmes are effective in reducing child problem behaviours and improving the skills and well-being of parents. Nevertheless, less is known about long-term progra...

We evaluated the effectiveness of 4 parent-training programs for children with externalizing problems. We tested the effectiveness of 3 behavioral programs (Comet, Cope, and Incredible Years) and 1 nonbehavioral program (Connect) in reducing child behavior problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, in improving positive...

In recent years, relationship scientists have made significant contributions to our understanding of the relation between friendship and happiness. Within this chapter, we will review empirical evidence that highlights friendship as a consistent and robust correlate of happiness among young adults. In addition to reviewing prominent indices of frie...

Immigrant youth are at risk of experiencing harassment in school; however, we have only limited understanding of what makes youth harass their peers on ground of their ethnic origin. To address this major limitation, we examined (a) whether youth’s negative attitudes toward immigrants impact their engagement in ethnic harassment over time and (b) w...

Immigrant youth are at risk of experiencing harassment in school; however, we have only limited understanding of what makes youth harass their peers on ground of their ethnic origin. To address this major limitation, we examined (a) whether youth's negative attitudes toward immigrants impact their engagement in ethnic harassment over time and (b) w...

Prevention field has achieved major advances in developing, implementing, and testing the efficacy of preventive interventions in controlled settings. Nevertheless, there is still a gap in translating the success of programs in efficacy trials into real-life settings. Dissemination of evidence-based programs is a major challenge. The authors argue...

There is growing evidence that psychopathic traits are stable across the adolescent developmental period. Yet, no previous studies have examined the longitudinal course of these traits across adolescence. In this study, we examined joint developmental trajectories of grandiose-manipulative traits, callous-unemotional traits, and impulsive-irrespons...

We tested the peer-socialization/contextual-amplification explanation for the link between early female puberty and problem behaviour. We propose that in cultures with high tolerance for adolescent heterosexual involvement, early puberty should be linked with problem behaviour—not in other cultures. We compared girls in two cultures (Slovakia and S...

Previous research has identified school bonding as protective against substance use during adolescence. However, there is still a question as to whether school involvement predicts changes in substance use or if substance use actually pre-dicts changes in level of school bonding. This study investigated the relationship between school bonding an...

This chapter examined the longitudinal effects of quitting, starting, or staying in organised sports activities over time among adolescents. Three-year longitudinal data from 428 adolescents were analysed using latent growth curve modelling. The findings provide compelling evidence regarding the effects of stability of and changes in sports partici...

In the present research on parenting and adolescent behavior, there is much focus on reciprocal, bidirectional, and transactional processes, but parenting-style research still adheres to a unidirectional perspective in which parents affect youth behavior but are unaffected by it. In addition, many of the most cited parenting-style studies have used...

The present study examined the directions of effects between adolescent psychopathic traits and parental behaviors. The data are from a community-based cohort-sequential study. Data were collected annually over 4 years. Participants were 875 adolescents, aged 13-15 at Time 1, and we analyzed their reports of negative and positive parental behavior,...

Decades of empirical research have shown that perceived autonomy support in close relationships is an essential correlate of happiness. However, what might account for the relationship between the 2? For this article, 4 studies (total N=1325) investigated friendship maintenance as a mediator of the association between friendship autonomy support an...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how children's involvement in bullying (as bullies, victims and bully‐victims) is related to longer term levels of various internalizing problems such as depression and self‐harm. Design/methodology/approach – A prospective longitudinal design was used based on data from the Swedish Seven Schoo...

The present study is an evaluation of a 3-year parental program aiming to prevent underage drinking. The intervention was implemented by a non-governmental organization and targeted parents with children aged 13-16 years old and included recurrent activities during the entire period of secondary school. The program consisted of four different types...

Given the lack of unequivocal findings on person-career fit, this investigation aims to gain insight into the role of cognitive styles in understanding students’ career preferences by two complementary studies. In study 1, we examined whether students (n = 84) with different cognitive styles differ in their entrepreneurial attitudes. Results showed...

A social transformation theory of change is proposed for enhancing representation, retention, and the achievement of minority students in higher education. The central tenet of the theory is the creation of empowering settings that focus on minority student achievement, as part of a larger transformative institutional change-process centered on inc...

Foreword The right of universities to take race-conscious action to diversify their student bodies rested for a quarter century on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1978 Bakke case, which left almost no one satisfied and many conservatives convinced that an increasingly conservative Supreme Court would outlaw affirmative action. After a huge nat...

Friendships are an important source of happiness. The present study (n = 280) investigated the role of friendship quality and conflict in happiness and examined the feature of friendship that best predicted happiness. Information was gathered about the quality and conflict of the best, first and second close friendships of the individual. Results r...

According to the 2003 Census Population Survey, approximately 38% of youth who attend school belong to an ethnic or racial minority group. 1 It is predicted that by 2020 the percentage of Hispanic, Asian, and Black youth will increase to 44%, while the percentage of non-Hispanic White children will decline to 53%. 2 The percentages of children of c...

Thesis for the degree of Master of Science in the Department of Psychology, at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.