Cycle: XXXVI

PhD student: Inês Alves De Matos Pires Ferreira

Role: R1 - First Stage Researcher

Supervisor: Prof. Marco Guicciardi

Co-supervisor: Prof. Ferdinando Fornara

Inês Alves Ferreira holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Systemic Psychology, and her research interests include people-environment studies and community development and intervention issues, particularly in low-SES residential areas.

During her Master's, she was part of community development projects working with multicultural communities in urban low-SES residential contexts, and her thesis focused on perceived insecurity and residential satisfaction among residents of a low-SES neighbourhood in Lisbon, Portugal. She previously worked as a research assistant in environmental psychology (Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Lund University, Sweden), being part of several research projects, mainly on human perception and behaviour and interaction with environmental factors in outdoor and indoor environments. More recently, she was a research assistant in psychology (Center for Research and Social Intervention - CIS-IUL, ISCTE-IUL, Portugal), where she was mainly involved in research projects with a focus on education and community intervention.

THESIS' ABSTRACT

"Independent mobility and well-being of (pre-)adolescents"

The work presented in this thesis represents a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the concept of Children’s Independent Mobility (CIM), hereby considered as the freedom of movement and/or play without adult supervision, and (pre-)adolescents’ psychological well-being, particularly within one of the most relevant proximal places for their development, the neighbourhood.

It departs from a systematic review of the existing literature on CIM and its beneficial outcomes for children and adolescents’ development, namely their psychological well-being. It shows that, despite the scarce existing empirical research on CIM psychological outcomes, its contribution to the development of socio-emotional and cognitive skills is undeniable. CIM’s contribution to the acquisition and development of relevant skills in terms of spatial knowledge (e.g., spatial orientation) and socio-emotional competencies (e.g., sociability and agency) is highlighted in the systematic review of the pertinent literature presented in the first section of the thesis.

The second section of the thesis reports an empirical study conducted with families of (pre-)adolescents living in Italy that shows important parental, child and neighbourhood correlates of CIM and its relationship with (pre-)adolescents’ mental health in terms of socioemotional and behavioural well-being. This study evidences the importance of parents’ perceptions of the traffic environment on (pre-) adolescents' right to move autonomously and its impact, together with the local social environment, on parental emotional bonds to the place, impacting their offspring’s mental health and psychological well-being.

Finally, a highlight of the main findings taken together, their contributions, and inputs for practice is provided as a concluding note.