Specialisation in Psychology
DOCPSY-2024-01: Cross-Cultural Psychology Studies
Culture represents the software of the mind, which distinguishes members of one human group from another (Hofstede, 1991). It is made up of specific values and practices rotted in the relationships each group has established with its physical and social environment throughout History. As the world today becomes increasingly interconnected, understanding the differences between cultures (i.e., cross-culture) and how people from different cultural backgrounds interact and adapt to multicultural environments (i.e., inter-culture) is essential to promote greater social well-being and effectiveness. This line of research of the Department of Psychology explores the intersection of cultural differences, with individual and group attitudes and behaviours, both across different cultures and within social, educational, and organisational multicultural contexts, taking advantage of the privileged role of Macao as a bridge between East and West.
Principal Supervisor: Maria Rita Silva(maria.silva@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Health Sciences
DOCPSY-2024-02: Organizational Psychology and Occupational Health
Any thoughts, emotions and Behaviors that happened at work is related to organiational psychology, namely (but not limited to) Work enagement, organizational committment, burnout, mental well-being and health about the employees and the organizations. As well as to investigate the organizational (e.g., leadership or organizational support) and personal (e.g., resilience and emotional intelligence) antcedents and outcomes. Also, it can be applied to gereral working popuation or to particular workers in different industries.
Principal Supervisor: Angus Kuok(angus.kuok@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Health Sciences
DOCPSY-2024-03: Digital Use Divide, Parenting, and Cyberbullying
This proposal reviews existing knowledge on how digital technology uses and activities of their children, their parenting style, and the opportunities and challenges that digital technology brings to parenting, parental support, and family life in Macau. Based on this research, the research questions of digital health in families’ lives: (1) How does parents’ familiarity with the internet using digital technology affect children’s well-being to understand when and why digital technology has a positive or negative influence on children? (2) How does digital technology integrate into family life in meaningful ways and promote parental mediation and parenting style? The methodology used is a cross-sectional survey design, including parents' studies in this current proposed study.
Principal Supervisor: Helen Liu(helen.liu@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Health Sciences
DOCPSY-2024-04: Public Mental Health
This proposal would investigate from a public health perspective on mental health and related issues, its impacts on the health care delivery system; the effectiveness of our current practice and intervention programs; the appropriateness and competence of relevant professionals involved in alleviating the issues; long terms health and wellbeing status focused in the community setting. Predictive models will be employed to analyse its direct impacts from a short-term and long-term duration, both its mediating and moderating variables necessary to understand its interlinkage and complexities relationship, which could inform a different approach to our public health policy in Macau.
Principal Supervisor: Jacky Ho(jackyh@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Health Sciences
DOCPSY-2024-05: Social Group Models in Parenting
Parenting is a rewarding but challenging journey. All thoughtful parents strive to become experts in their child’s development. Giving birth to a child does not necessarily pair parents with mature parenting skills. Parents must recall their holistic development to enhance their parental growth. Innovative technology-operation parenting provides an 8-week long parenting training to parents of children with behaviour problems, curriculum-based, experiential, parenting-group model, focused on in-depth learning and skill building, to help parents cope with children’s behavioural issues. The eight progressive group phrases are as follows: (1) Collective gathering; (2) Family of origin; (3) Life disruption; (4) Behaviour modification; (5) Total understanding; (6) Super parent; (7) Mindful action; (8) Holistic parenting. For this review, supporting parent group is defined as community-based initiatives designed to promote the flow of resources and supports to parents that strengthen functioning and enhance the growth and development of children with behavioural problems. The social group model for Chinese and Spanish-speaking parents in collaboration with social service agencies has been implemented in NYC. Since COVID, it has been done online. This study aims to replicate the social group model in Macao. An experimental design will be conducted in this study.
Principal Supervisor: Helen Liu(helen.liu@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Health Sciences
