Purpose: The purposes of this study were to develop self-rating school and neighborhood collective efficacy scales for use in Japanese adolescents and to assess the psychometric properties of the scales.

Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 1,471 students in grades 10 through 12 in six public high schools in Japan in 2015. The collective efficacy questionnaire comprised of social cohesion in school (7 items), social cohesion in the neighborhood (5 items), informal social control in school (7 items), and informal social control in the neighborhood (6 items). Factor analysis was used to evaluate the construct validity of the scales. The predictive validity was examined using the associations with safety at school and neighborhood and self-rated health and K6. Scale reliability was assessed based on internal consistency.

Results: Factor analysis confirmed that collective efficacy constructs among Japanese adolescents consisted of collective efficacy factors in school and neighborhood with social cohesion and informal social control subordinate factors. The scales had good internal consistency (more than 0.9 of Cronbach’s alphas). The collective efficacy scales, as expected, were associated with safety at school and in the neighborhood and subjective health, indicating appropriate predictive validity.

Conclusions: The present findings show the reliability and validity of the school and neighborhood collective efficacy scales for Japanese adolescents.

Purpose: The present study aimed to explore relationships between suicidal inclination and lifestyle and behavioral factors in junior high school students (aged 12–15 years).

Methods: A total of approximately 3,000 junior high school students (grades 7-9) living in the city of Miyazaki, Miyazaki Prefecture were recruited by random sampling from a citywide total of the 10,642 students. A questionnaire was mailed to 2,996 students. The questionnaire covered personal and lifestyle factors including sex, eating habits, sleep habits, chronic diseases, Internet use, illicit substances use, and menstruation. Suicidal inclination was measured using the Scale of Suicidal Inclination for junior high school students and its subscales. Scores of the subscales were compared between males and females. Students were divided into low and high groups for each subscale and association of the personal and lifestyle factors with each subscale was examined using logistic regression.

Results: Responses were obtained from 537 students out of 2,996 (17.9%). Out of the 537 students, 54 were excluded from the analysis due to invalid, missing, or implausible data. A total of 213 boys (44.1%) and 270 girls (55.9%) were studied. Most students (42.9%) reported less than 7–8 hours of sleep per night, with girls reporting shorter sleep duration than boys (p=0.001). A sex difference in suicidal inclination was observed for depressive mood, which was higher in girls. Multivariate analysis showed that suicidal inclination was mostly associated with sleep duration in boys, and sleep duration, interest in illicit substances, and menstruation in girls. The multivariate analysis of lifestyle factors and high subscale scores found that “bedtime,” “sleep duration/quality of sleep,” “chronic diseases,” “interest in illicit substances,” and “time using the Internet” showed some association with suicidal inclination in both boys and girls.

Conclusions: In addition to confirming previously identified risk factors, the present study suggests that additional risk factors are “whether dinner is eaten alone” for boys, and “grades,” “experience of dieting,” and “irregularity of menstrual cycle” for girls. To identify high-risk individuals effectively, screening for suicide prevention in junior high school students should consider sex-based characteristics. The present study also demonstrated relationships between suicide and lifestyle factors that should be considered by the government when developing public health policy and suicide prevention interventions.

Background: There are 93-150 million children with disabilities worldwide, and they are mostly excluded from education. Following the Salamanca World Conference, many countries sought to provide education for them. However, research concerning inclusive education (IE) among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has not been thoroughly examined. Hence, in this study, a literature review was conducted comprising English-language research published between 1995-2015 to determine the status of the inclusion of children with disabilities among ASEAN members.

Methods: Relevant literature were searched by ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Scopus, ERIC, and POPLINE. The references of identified articles were likewise searched in order to find relevant publications. Studies were selected if they were (a) published in a peer-reviewed journal, (b) written in English, (c) addressed one or more aspects of IE among children with disabilities in ASEAN countries, (d) published between 1995-2015, and (e) available online, either in the form of a comprehensive abstract or full text. The included articles were classified into four categories: (1) studies on attitudes toward IE, (2) studies on the difficulties of IE, (3) studies on the evaluation of IE, and (4) others. Each study was reviewed with respect to title, publication year, country, purpose, methods, and key findings.

Results: Twenty-seven publications were identified. Of them, 78% of the studies had been conducted in Malaysia and Singapore. The number of publication in (1)-(4) category was 9, 3, 8 and 7 respectively. Interest in IE has grown rapidly in recent years. Twenty-two (81%) of the articles were written in 2010 or later.

Conclusions: Interest in IE is growing rapidly in ASEAN countries; nevertheless, their collective IE-related research output has a disparity among the countries. Studies on attitudes toward IE were a key focus, and research in all of the categories utilized in this paper have increased significantly since 2010— particularly in terms of demonstrating the efficacy of IE by using objective scales.