The purpose of this questionnaire study was to investigate relations between teacher burnout and other factors in Special Needs Education. Questionnaires were distributed to 206 elementary school teachers in charge of mainstream classrooms. The survey consisted of the following scales: the burnout tendency scale, the job environmental stressor scale, the sense of burden scale in Special Needs Education, and the self-efficacy scale. Other items were presence/absence of handicapped pupils, gender of teacher and teaching experience in years. Results showed that: (a) No difference was seen for teacher's burnout scores according to presence or absence of handicapped pupils in the classroom. But "Isolation" scores were lower for teachers having handicapped students than for those without. (b) An examination by gender showed that male teachers with handicapped pupils had higher scores for "Student guidance" than those without handicapped pupils. (c) An examination for years of teaching experience and presence of handicapped children showed that medium experience/handicapped students present group had lower scores on "Conflict with administrators" than the medium experience/handicapped pupils absent group. The medium experience/handicapped pupils present group scored higher than the medium experience/absent group on "student guidance". (d) the burnout tendency model was examined using an analysis of covariance structures and indicated a significant pass from environmental stressor to burnout and an office environmental stressor via the sense of burden for Special Needs Education. Negative perceptions about the workplace environment may have influenced uneasiness and a feeling of burden regarding Special Needs Education.

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The purpose of this study was to develop a perfectionism scale for university students and to investigate the relations among perfectionism, self-efficacy for group adaptation, and mental health of university students. The subjects were 240 university students (male=82, female=158, mean age=19.79, SD=1.07). They were asked to answer a set of questionnaires including a face sheet, Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale for University Students (MPSUS) which was developed in this study, Self-efficacy for Group Adaptation Scale (Gushiken et al., 2007), and the Mental Health Pattern (MHP-1; Hashimoto et al., 2000). The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed a 5-factor solution with 25 items of the MPSUS. Each of the factors demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha reliability values ranging from 0.772 to 0.854. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the structural validity of the MPSUS showed acceptable fit indices (GFI=0.907, AGFI=0.877, CFI=0.971, RMSEA=0.036). Covariance Structure Analysis revealed that Self-efficacy for Group Adaptation was negatively associated with Mental Health Pattern but "Afraid of Mistakes" was directly and positively associated with the Mental Health Pattern. On the other hand, "Objective Evaluation" and "Higher Purposes" are significantly associated with Mental Health Pattern indirectly through Self-efficacy for Group Adaptation. The results suggested that the reliability and the structural validity of the MPSUS as a scale for assessing Japanese university students' perfectionism was statistically satisfied. The result of covariance structure analysis revealed that pass coefficients among each of the scales indicated higher perfectionism negatively influenced university students' mental health directly. On the other hand, self-efficacy for group adaptation moderates the negative effect between perfectionism and mental health. In future research, effective methods of psychological and educational intervention should be considered in order to enhance self-efficacy for group adaptation.

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The purpose of the present study was to examine for changes over time in the mental health of students at a teacher training university. Four thousand four hundred and thirty-five students (1775 men and 2660 women) who attended a teacher training university from 1984 to 2006 responded to surveys. The UPI (University Personality Inventory) survey form was used to examine university students' mental health. The results revealed no major changes over time in the UPI scores, and that students seeking to become teachers maintained good mental health. Moreover, students who found employment in the field of education had lower depression and distrust scores than other students. These results suggest that the mental health of students seeking to become teachers has not deteriorated over the past 23 years and that the mental health scores of students who gain employment in the field of education are high. It could thus be argued that teachers' mental health deterioration may be caused by significant deterioration in the school system and poor working conditions and not simply from changes in the teachers' nature.

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The purpose of this study was to develop a Decisional Balance Scale for Mobile Email use among University Students and to conduct a mobile phone user survey at a Japanese university. Japanese university students (N=253) were distributed questionnaires in January 2009. This questionnaire was composed of socio-demographical items, mobile phone user survey items (frequency of using various functions, average cost per month, average of sending and receiving emails) and 38 items of a decisional balance scale for mobile email use (DBS-ME) which were collected from a preliminary survey. The mean score of mobile phone user survey items were calculated. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Cronbach's alpha reliability analyses were conducted in developing the DBS-ME. The mobile phone user survey results showed that 1) email was used more often than any other function, 2) the average monthly charge for using a mobile phone was 9576.67 Japanese Yen, 3) the average number of emails that the subjects sent out per day was 19.65, 4) the average number of emails that subjects received per day was 22.79. Upon applying EFA and CFA a two-factor solution with fourteen items and acceptable structural validity was identified. Each of the factors demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha reliability values. The results of this study showed that DBS-ME can be useful in assessing the decisional balance for Mobile Email use among Japanese university students. In future research, the association between DBS-ME and mental health should be analyzed.

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