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Populism is usually studied by looking at the electoral and rhetorical strategies of parties considered to be populist. In contrast, this article attempts to measure the support for the core propositions of populism among voters and explain the social differences in that support. On the basis of a survey of the Dutch-speaking population of Belgium (N: 2,330) we find that this support for populism turns out not to be directly influenced by a weak or uncertain economic position, by dissatisfaction with personal life or feelings of anomie. Support for populism appears foremost as a consequence of a very negative view of the evolution of society – declinism – and of the feeling of belonging to a group of people that is unfairly treated by society.

Background To investigate how social support relates to mental health problems for Belgian late adolescents and young adults 15–25 years of age. Additionally, we examine changes in mental health problems between 2008 and 2013 and investigate gender differences. Methods Multivariate analysis of variance was used to investigate (1) psychological distress, (2) anxiety and (3) depression among 713 boys and 720 girls taken from two successive waves (2008 and 2013) of a representative sample of the Belgian population (Belgian Health Interview survey). Psychological distress was measured by the General Health Questionnaire, anxiety and depression by the Symptom Check-List-90-Revised. Results Gender differences were found for psychological distress, anxiety and depression with girls reporting significantly higher scores than boys. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed that adolescents who are dissatisfied with their social contacts and experience poor social support reported more psychological distress, anxiety and depression. In addition, young adult boys (20–25 years of age) were more likely to experience psychological distress when compared to late adolescent boys (15–19 years of age). Finally, the prevalence of anxiety and depression increased substantially between 2008 and 2013 for girls and to a lesser extent for boys. Conclusions Especially girls and young people with poor social support experience mental health problems more frequently than boys and those with strong social support. Improving social support among young people may serve as a protective buffer to mental health problems.

Current food consumption patterns contribute to the rising prevalence of obesity and noncommunicable diseases and exacerbate environmental degradation. Digital media offer promising opportunities to promote healthier and more sustainable eating; yet, evidence regarding their effectiveness remains fragmented. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of digital interventions in improving healthy and sustainable food consumption and (2) to identify which participant and intervention characteristics are associated with greater effectiveness. A systematic search was conducted in January 2024 and repeated in September 2025 across Web of Science, Embase, and Scopus, supplemented with forward and backward reference searching. Eligible studies were those with a quasi-experimental or longitudinal design evaluating digital interventions targeting nonclinical populations, with the aim of increasing plant-based food consumption or reducing animal-based food intake. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. Included interventions were coded for behavior change techniques using the Behavior Change Taxonomy version 1. A random-effects meta-analysis with robust variance estimation was performed, and moderator analyses were conducted with participant and intervention characteristics. Eligibility screening led to the inclusion of 52 papers published between 2004 and 2025, with 24,652 participants in total. The meta-analysis revealed a small but statistically significant positive effect of digital interventions on food consumption outcomes (d=0.33, 95% CI 0.25-0.42; P<.001). However, substantial heterogeneity (I2=86%, 95% prediction interval -0.21 to 0.87) indicates considerable variation in effectiveness across intervention characteristics. A moderator analysis showed no significant difference in effectiveness (P=.53) between interventions aimed at reducing meat consumption (d=0.38, 95% CI 0.20-0.57; P<.001) and those promoting plant-based eating (d=0.33, 95% CI 0.23-0.42; P<.001). Although digital interventions had the strongest effects among young adults (d=0.46, 95% CI 0.30-0.61; P<.001), age-related differences were not statistically significant. Intervention effectiveness differed significantly by platform (P=.03), with social media interventions (d=0.65, 95% CI 0.41-0.90; P<.001) yielding stronger effects than other modalities. Incorporating prompts or cues significantly enhanced effectiveness (d=0.58 vs d=0.30; P=.04). Although not statistically significant, interventions including social support or behavioral comparison (both d=0.39; P<.001) yielded larger effects. Few studies included adolescents or individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This review underscores the innovative potential of digital interventions in improving eating behavior, highlighting how effectiveness varies by intervention design. Social media emerge as particularly promising, likely due to their unique social and interactive features. By pinpointing the contexts and types of digital interventions that most effectively promote plant-based eating, this study provides timely guidance for researchers and practitioners in increasingly digitalized food environments. Nonetheless, more high-quality studies are needed to confirm these insights and address the critical gap among adolescents and low socioeconomic groups.

Supervisor support is crucial for the successful and timely completion of the PhD and the largest contributor to PhD students' overall job satisfaction. The COVID-19 pandemic affected PhD students' life substantially through delayed experiments, missed timelines, running out of funding, change to online team- and supervisor meetings, mandatory working from home, and social confinement. This contribution considers PhD students' satisfaction scores to reflect the extent to which PhD students felt supported by their supervisor during the COVID-19 pandemic so far and aims to investigate to what extent did PhD students' satisfaction with supervisor support changed over time. It uses two longitudinal two cohorts of wave 4 to 5 of the PhD Survey at a Belgian university. These cohorts are representative of two different ways the COVID-19 pandemic might have impacted doctoral research. Cohort 1 (n = 345) includes a pre-COVID measurement (April-May 2019) and a measurement immediately after the start of the abrupt lockdown in April-May 2020. Cohort 2 (n = 349) includes the measurement at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and after a year with continuously changing containment policies (April-May 2021). The composite measure of satisfaction with supervisor support is based on six items with high internal consistency. No significant net effect of time was revealed. Instead within subject interactions with time showed that in cohort 1, PhD students at the start of their PhD trajectory and PhD students with family responsibilities reported lower supervisor satisfaction scores over time. In cohort 2, PhD students not pursuing academic careers reported lower satisfaction scores over time. In times of crises, special attention needs to be paid to PhD students who are extra susceptible to uncertainties because of their junior status or personal situation, and especially those PhD students for whom doctoral research is not a trajectory to position themselves in academia.

It is widely believed that the school context plays a crucial role in teacher burnout. Against that background, we (1) critically review existing empirical multilevel studies on teacher burnout and (2) use data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 to assess the school-level variance and its correlates in emotional exhaustion, cynical depersonalization, and personal accomplishment in 2,300 primary (183 schools) and 2,700 lower secondary (190 schools) teachers in the Flemish-speaking community of Belgium, and 2,135 lower secondary (120 schools) teachers in the Frenchspeaking community of Belgium. Our results reveal that (1) conceptual confusion exists surrounding school-context variables and (2) the between-school variance in teacher burnout is small. Implications for educational policy and teacher burnout research are discussed.

Since the end of World War II, a worldwide educational revolution has led to the development of what David Baker has termed schooled societies. In such societies, school-based education has become a central and authoritative institution, transforming individuals, groups and society at large. Up to this point, research on schooled society has focused mainly on its global similarities. Yet as within this global trend there exist important national differences, the theory of schooled society needs an indicator that can be used in empirical comparative research. Therefore, the authors develop a multidimensional index that maps cross-national differences in the centrality of schooling. The authors collected 12 indicators from internationally comparable country-level data to construct a unique and publicly available dataset containing 192 countries. Indicator reduction analyses indicated that two subdimensions could be identified: the “institutionalization of schooling” and “school-based allocation.” As these subscales were strongly related, the authors constructed a composite scale, namely, the Schooled Society Index. This index added value compared with classically used indicators of schooling. Finally, the authors study the relationships between the Schooled Society Index and a range of commonly used demographic, economic and political country-level variables.

Over the last two decades, European countries have struggled with several crises (e.g., the Great Recession, the refugee crisis) which had a tremendous impact on (some) societies. Typically, these crises were accompanied by divisive public discourses that rely heavily on a sharp and moralistic us-them distinction. Especially extreme right- and left-wing parties have adopted such conflict discourses and have gained much electoral support. Against this background, this paper has two objectives. First, data from the European Quality of Life Survey from 2003 to 2016 in 27 countries are used to provide a comprehensive overview of the salience of perceived societal conflicts between seven pairs of groups between countries and across time. We find substantial differences between countries and longitudinal trend variation in the salience of perceived societal conflict. For example, in Eastern European countries more economic conflict is perceived, while in Western European countries people perceive more cultural conflict between different ethnic and religious groups. Second, multigroup confirmatory factor analyses reveal that specific perceptions of conflict are structured by an underlying general orientation, generalized conflict thinking: people’s tendency to perceive society through the lens of conflict regardless of the specificity of these groups. The measure for generalized conflict thinking is metric equivalent across a large sample of countries. This demonstrates that generalized conflict thinking can be used as a social indicator for comparative research. In the conclusion we elaborate on the implications of our findings and develop a research agenda regarding generalized conflict thinking.

Background Due to a globally ageing population, the demand for informal caregivers is increasing. This study investigates the socio-demographic profile of informal caregivers in Belgium and assesses the relationship between informal care (intensity and care recipients) and mental health, considering potential moderators like education, age, and gender. Methods Using population-based data from the 2013 and 2018 waves of the Belgian Health Interview Survey ( N  = 14,661), we conducted multivariate (multinomial/ordinal) logistic and linear regression analyses to examine the socio-demographic profile of informal caregivers and their psychological distress, measured through the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Results The prevalence of informal caregiving increased from 10.0% in 2013 to 13.0% in 2018. Informal caregivers were predominantly female, middle-aged, and often had no paid job. High-intensity caregivers (over 20 h/week) experienced significantly higher psychological distress compared to non-caregivers, whereas lower-intensity caregivers did not. Additionally, while gender, age, and education were significant predictors of who becomes a caregiver, they did not moderate the relationship between caregiving and mental health. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the stress of caregiving is more directly related to the nature and intensity of the caregiving tasks themselves rather than the demographic characteristics of the caregivers. Interventions aimed at reducing the adverse effects of caregiving might need to be universally applicable to all caregivers, focusing on reducing the intrinsic burdens of caregiving tasks rather than targeting demographic subgroups.

This study investigates how graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) differ from regular graduates in terms of input characteristics (i.e., who they are), process characteristics (i.e., how they experience the PhD trajectory), and the self-estimated likelihood of successfully completing the PhD. Additionally, it assesses to what extent and how the input and process characteristics explain the self-estimated success rate between the two groups. The data come from four waves of the PhD Survey (2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021; N = 1,766) conducted at a large university in Brussels (Belgium). Results show that GTAs estimated their likelihood of successful completion of their PhD lower compared to regular graduates. This difference is mediated by a lower satisfaction with the supervisor support and a higher amount of time pressure among GTAs. Additionally, GTAs’ surplus of time spent on teaching duties and the lack of a research plan was negatively related to the self-estimated likelihood of successful completion to a greater extent than regular graduates. Plain Language Summary This study investigates how PhD students who combine their research with teaching classes (graduate teaching assistants, GTAs) differ from regular graduates. We look at how both groups are different from each other in terms of input characteristics (i.e., who they are), process characteristics (i.e., how they experience the PhD trajectory), and the self-estimated likelihood of successfully completing the PhD. Additionally, our study assesses to what extent and how the input and process characteristics explain the self-estimated success rate of the two groups. The data come from four waves of the PhD Survey (2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) conducted at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Results show that GTAs estimated their likelihood for successful completion of their PhD lower compared to regular graduates. This difference can be party explained by the fact that GTAs experience a lower satisfaction with the supervisor support and a higher amount of time pressure than regular graduates. Additionally, spending more time on teaching duties than was stipulated in the contract and not having a research plan has a stronger negative influence on the self-estimated likelihood for successful completion of GTAs than it does for regular graduates.

One of the clearest manifestations of how gender norms come into play, is the overrepresentation of men and women in gender stereotypical occupations. Therefore, this paper studies occupational preferences and their relationship with perceived gender typicality, perceived pressure for gender conformity from friends and discontent with gender boundaries among preadolescents ( N = 795) in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders). Discriminant analysis enables us to develop an original and sensitive measure for gendered preferences. Subsequently, we use multivariate regression analyses to study the variation in gendered occupational preferences. Models are separately estimated for boys ( n = 395) and girls ( n = 400) and further include their academic self-concept, socio-economic and socio-cultural background. The main finding of this study indicates that boys’ and girls’ stereotypical occupational preferences are differently related to gender norms. While boys’ gender stereotypical preferences relate to their perceived pressure for gender conformity from friends, this does not apply to girls. For girls, the results indicate that their stereotypical occupational preferences reflect an important part of their gender typical identity. Moreover, girls who feel confident about their academic capabilities aspire less gender stereotypical occupations. The results also indicate the relevance of considering socio-economic and socio-cultural background variables when studying preadolescents’ occupational preferences.