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Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties

BACKGROUND: In accord with new European university reforms initiated by the Bologna Process, our objectives were to assess psychological quality of life (QoL) and to analyse its associations with academic employability skills (AES) among students from the Faculty of Language, Literature, Humanities,...

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Autores principales: Baumann, Michèle, Ionescu, Ion, Chau, Nearkasen
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21501507
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-11-63
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author Baumann, Michèle
Ionescu, Ion
Chau, Nearkasen
author_facet Baumann, Michèle
Ionescu, Ion
Chau, Nearkasen
author_sort Baumann, Michèle
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In accord with new European university reforms initiated by the Bologna Process, our objectives were to assess psychological quality of life (QoL) and to analyse its associations with academic employability skills (AES) among students from the Faculty of Language, Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education, Walferdange Luxembourg (F1, mostly vocational/applied courses); the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Liege, Belgium (F2, mainly general courses); and the Faculty of Social Work, Iasi, Romania (F3, mainly vocational/professional courses). METHOD: Students who redoubled or who had studied at other universities were excluded. 355 newly-registered first-year students (145 from F1, 125 from F2, and 85 from F3) were invited to complete an online questionnaire (in French, German, English or Romanian) covering socioeconomic data, the AES scale and the QoL-psychological, QoL-social relationships and QoL-environment subscales as measured with the World Health Organisation Quality of Life short-form (WHOQoL-BREF) questionnaire. Analyses included multiple regressions with interactions. RESULTS: QoL-psychological, QoL-social relationships and QoL-environment' scores were highest in F1 (Luxembourg), and the QoL-psychological score in F2 (Belgium) was the lower. AES score was higher in F1 than in F3 (Romania). A positive link was found between QoL-psychological and AES for F1 (correlation coefficient 0.29, p < 0.01) and F3 (correlation coefficient 0.30, p < 0.05), but the association was negative for F2 (correlation coefficient -0.25, p < 0.01). QoL-psychological correlated positively with QoL-social relationships (regression coefficient 0.31, p < 0.001) and QoL-environment (regression coefficient 0.35, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Psychological quality of life is associated with acquisition of skills that increase employability from the faculties offering vocational/applied/professional courses in Luxembourg and Romania, but not their academically orientated Belgian counterparts. In the context of developing a European Higher Educational Area, these measurements are major indicators that can be used as a guide to promoting programs geared towards counseling, improvement of the social environment, and services to assist with university work and facilitate achievement of future professional projects.
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spelling pubmed-30942872011-05-14 Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties Baumann, Michèle Ionescu, Ion Chau, Nearkasen BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: In accord with new European university reforms initiated by the Bologna Process, our objectives were to assess psychological quality of life (QoL) and to analyse its associations with academic employability skills (AES) among students from the Faculty of Language, Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education, Walferdange Luxembourg (F1, mostly vocational/applied courses); the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Liege, Belgium (F2, mainly general courses); and the Faculty of Social Work, Iasi, Romania (F3, mainly vocational/professional courses). METHOD: Students who redoubled or who had studied at other universities were excluded. 355 newly-registered first-year students (145 from F1, 125 from F2, and 85 from F3) were invited to complete an online questionnaire (in French, German, English or Romanian) covering socioeconomic data, the AES scale and the QoL-psychological, QoL-social relationships and QoL-environment subscales as measured with the World Health Organisation Quality of Life short-form (WHOQoL-BREF) questionnaire. Analyses included multiple regressions with interactions. RESULTS: QoL-psychological, QoL-social relationships and QoL-environment' scores were highest in F1 (Luxembourg), and the QoL-psychological score in F2 (Belgium) was the lower. AES score was higher in F1 than in F3 (Romania). A positive link was found between QoL-psychological and AES for F1 (correlation coefficient 0.29, p < 0.01) and F3 (correlation coefficient 0.30, p < 0.05), but the association was negative for F2 (correlation coefficient -0.25, p < 0.01). QoL-psychological correlated positively with QoL-social relationships (regression coefficient 0.31, p < 0.001) and QoL-environment (regression coefficient 0.35, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Psychological quality of life is associated with acquisition of skills that increase employability from the faculties offering vocational/applied/professional courses in Luxembourg and Romania, but not their academically orientated Belgian counterparts. In the context of developing a European Higher Educational Area, these measurements are major indicators that can be used as a guide to promoting programs geared towards counseling, improvement of the social environment, and services to assist with university work and facilitate achievement of future professional projects. BioMed Central 2011-04-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3094287/ /pubmed/21501507 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-11-63 Text en Copyright ©2011 Baumann et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Baumann, Michèle
Ionescu, Ion
Chau, Nearkasen
Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties
title Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties
title_full Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties
title_fullStr Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties
title_full_unstemmed Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties
title_short Psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three European faculties
title_sort psychological quality of life and its association with academic employability skills among newly-registered students from three european faculties
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094287/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21501507
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-11-63
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