Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Losing memory, losing meaning? Towards a deeper understanding of meaning in life in Alzheimer’s disease patients" "Jessie Dezutter" "School Psychology and Development in Context" "Within psychological science, the concept of meaning in life is understood as the subjective experience that one’s life makes sense, has a purpose, and is worth living. Burgeoning empirical evidence shows the benefits of experiencing meaning in life for physical and mental health across different populations, including older adults. However, current views of meaning in life assume that complex cognitive abilities are needed to develop a sense of meaning. This triggers the question of how meaning can be understood for older adults who experience cognitive decline due to dementia. The current dissertation therefore provides an in-depth examination of meaning in life in older adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). More specifically, we discuss how these older adults understand and experience meaning in life from a qualitative perspective (Part 1; Chapter 1-2), and how meaning in life and key aspects of psychological and cognitive functioning are related to each other quantitatively (Part 2; Chapter 3-7).In Chapter 1, we use a top-down directed content analysis approach to explore the correspondence between scholarly views on meaning in life and the lay conceptions of older adults with AD. The results show that the descriptions of participants with AD largely accorded with current views in the literature but also offer new insights for the conceptualization of meaning, such as the differentiation between felt and cognitive coherence and between future-oriented and fulfilled purpose, and the entanglement of the experience of meaning with aspects of hedonic well-being.In Chapter 2, in-depth interviews are analyzed using a bottom-up phenomenological reflective life-world approach. The essential meaning of the experience of meaning in life for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease is formulated as ‘continuing to participate in the dance of life as oneself.’ This essence is further illuminated by describing its intertwining constituents: feeling connected and involved with others and the world, continuing normal everyday life as yourself, calmly surrendering and letting go, and desiring freedom, growth, and invigoration.Chapter 3 focuses on sources of well-being for older adults with and without AD in nursing homes. We find that for both groups, personal growth is related to higher levels of meaning in life and family is related to higher life satisfaction. For the older adults with AD, society and community is also related to meaning in life.In Chapter 4, we show using cross-sectional data that nursing home residents with AD who endorse higher levels of meaning in life also report lower levels of depressive symptoms and higher levels of life satisfaction, while controlling for demographics, cognitive status, and clustering within nursing homes.Chapter 5 focuses on the relation between quality of life and cognitive functioning for nursing home residents with AD. The results show that residents rate their own quality of life higher than their professional caregivers do. Furthermore, the residents’ self-reports are not related to their cognitive status. In contrast, caregivers give lower quality of life ratings to residents who have lower cognitive status.In Chapter 6, we examine the relations between purpose in life, subjective memory beliefs, and memory performance. As a background investigation to the following chapter, this study focuses on a large sample of adults in middle to late adulthood without dementia using two-wave longitudinal data. Cross-lagged panel analyses show that adults with higher sense of purpose are more likely to have higher subjective memory beliefs nine years later.In Chapter 7, finally, we examine the longitudinal relationship between meaning in life and psychological and cognitive functioning in nursing home residents with AD over three waves. Cross-lagged panel analyses show that older adults who report higher levels of meaning in life are more likely to have less depressive symptoms one year later. We find no evidence for a strong relation between cognitive functioning and meaning in life, challenging the strong cognitive assumptions of current psychological conceptualizations of meaning in life.In sum, this dissertation highlights the relevance of meaning in life for older adults with AD, as their personal accounts as well quantitative analyses show the importance of meaning for their psychological health.  " "Aspects of religious and spiritual meaning systems in late life psychological functioning" "Jessie Dezutter" "Clinical Psychology, School Psychology and Development in Context, Research Unit of Pastoral and Empirical Theology" "Religion and spirituality still are an important part of life for many people and as such function as a framework – the so-called meaning system – from which individuals perceive, interpret and adapt to the world (Reker & Wong, 1988; Silberman, 2005). Especially in late adulthood, religion and spirituality may provide direction and support for dealing with the challenges of later life. Studying religion and spirituality as part of an older adult’s meaning system is important, not only because of the heightened significance of religion and spirituality in late adulthood (Wink & Dillon, 2002), but also because it is considered to be positively associated with well-being and health (Miller & Thoresen, 2003; Weber & Pargament, 2014). Therefore, the present dissertation focuses on specific aspects of religious and spiritual meaning systems in relation to late life psychological functioning.More specific, a large scale longitudinal study was set up to investigate two aspects of religious meaning system, i.e., religious doubt and insecure attachment to God, in relation to the experience of depressive symptoms among nursing home residents. The occurrence of depressive symptoms and depression is a well-known problem among institutionalized older adults, making it a valuable indicator of late life psychological functioning when examined in relation to religious meaning systems. To improve our insight of spiritual meaning systems in relation to late life psychological functioning, data from a cross-sectional study on community dwelling older adults was used to examine the unique relation of each spirituality dimension with psychological well-being. Lastly, to include the voice of the older adults themselves regarding their perspective of the experience of spirituality, in-depth interviews were conducted to uncover the essence of the experience of spirituality in late life within a nursing home context.In sum, by using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data as well as qualitative data, the present dissertation managed to show from different perspectives how religion and spirituality, as part of older adult’s meaning system, are related to psychological functioning in late adulthood. It turned out that (1) religion and spirituality constitute indeed an important of the meaning system of religious and spiritual older adults; (2) older adults’ experience of religion and spirituality cannot be seen independently of the developmental phase of late adulthood; and (3) older adults’ psychological functioning has an impact on their religious and spiritual meaning systems." "The wandering and reflecting senior mind: uncovering the link between spontaneous and effortful mental processes and the experience of meaning in late life" "Jessie Dezutter" "School Psychology and Development in Context, Neuropsychiatry" "De ervaring van betekenis in het leven is cruciaal voor het psychologisch welbevinden van oudere volwassenen in de eindfase van het leven, zoals bijvoorbeeld oudere volwassenen in woonzorgcentra. Desalniettemin is er een opvallend gebrek aan onderzoek naar de mentale processen die deze ervaring ondersteunen. In het huidige project stellen we voor dat spontante en doelbewuste processen van elkaar kunnen worden onderscheiden. Het empirisch luik van dit project focust op het spontane proces van gedachten-dwalen (mind-wandering) en het doelbewuste proces van betekenis-reflectie. Tijdens gedachten-dwalen drijft de aandacht weg van stimuli in de onmiddellijke externe omgeving naar interne gedachten. Met betekenis-reflectie wordt het doelbewuste gedachtenproces bedoeld waarbij gereflecteerd wordt over issues die te maken hebben met betekenis in het leven. In de literatuur worden de hypotheses naar voor geschoven dat deze processen bijdragen tot de ervaring van betekenis in het leven, maar empirisch onderzoek ontbreekt. Vier studies zullen inzicht bieden in de tussen- en binnen-persoon relaties tussen de ervaring van betekenis in het leven, gedachten-dwalen, en betekenis-reflectie, aan de hand van verschillende methoden (cross-sectionele vragenlijst, dagelijkse bevraging, experience sampling)." "Unlocking newcomers’ literacy development: learning for life in formal, non-formal and informal spheres" "Karel Arnaut" "Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Language, Education and Society, Leuven, Centre for Sociological Research" "Migration brings people to places where not only new languages but also new forms of literacy (administrative, commercial, digital, etc.) are important for their civic and professional socialisation. Although for a lot of newcomers literacy learning is an important part of their voluntary or mandatory integration trajectory, the courses offered to them in formal educational contexts often prove to be unsuccessful in terms of success rate and time efficiency. In this project we apply an empowerment approach, which means we will be building further on the ‘can do’s’, resources and skills newcomers have built up in the course of their lives instead of highlighting their ‘lacking’ thereof.. Using this dynamic view of learning as a reflexive and transformative practice, the project aims to map the literacy learning practices of newcomers in formal, but also non-formal and informal learning spheres. Through ethnographic monitoring the project seeks (a) to gain insights into how newcomers’ literacy learning is being perceived, handled, and valued by themselves as well as by significant others in those three spheres of learning; and (b) to explore, through a set of experiments, the possible transfers of literacy learning practices between the spheres. To thematically unpack these transmissions, the project distinguishes four specific domains of resources: (a) the multilingual resources newcomers bring with them, (b) their literacy brokers and brokering networks, (c) the technologies they use in support of their language and literacy practices and (d) the genres of tasks within which the three other resources are deployed and which provide affordances for learning. Building on our research findings, we will develop prototypes of toolkits for trainers in the different learning spheres." "Sabbatical: Bert Broeckaert: Palliative sedation, dying and death and dealing with ethical questions at the beginning of life in a multicultural and multi-religious context" "Bert Broeckaert" "Research Unit of Theological and Comparative Ethics" "In this sabbatical period I want to do three things. First, I want to give a new impulse to the line of research that I have developed since 1998 with regard to palliative sedation and that I have neglected somewhat the last few years. In particular, I want to prepare and submit a new research project that maps the contemporary reality of palliative sedation in Flemish palliative units and places it in an international context. I also want to further investigate the religious and cultural aspects of palliative sedation. Secondly, I want to take an important new step in my research line on dealing with dying and death in a multicultural context. The emphasis here is on the further expansion of research into the younger generation (especially second and especially third generation Muslims). Thirdly, in cooperation with the people from the university clinic (doctors, pastoral services, ...), I want to set up a new line of research on dealing with ethical questions at the beginning of life (prenatal diagnostics, ...) in a multicultural context and prepare the necessary project proposals. " "Meaning Making in Old Age: A longitudinal approach" "Jessie Dezutter" "School Psychology and Development in Context" "The proposed research program will investigate how older persons establish meaning when confronted with stressful events inherent to late life and how specific religious, spiritual, and secular factors influence this process. The program will clarify (a) whether religious, spiritual or secular meaning systems influence meaning making processes in old age, (b) how these dynamic processes develop over time, (c) how specific aspects of the meaning system or specific meaning making processes facilitate or inhibit optimal late life functioning, (d) develop late life interventions that stimulate the experience of meaning in life. The program will offer insights pivotal for policy making and practical applications. " "The role of detained female adolescents’ quality of life in explaining offending outcomes in emerging adulthood" "Wouter Vanderplasschen" "Department of Special Needs Education" "It is not well understood why some detained female adolescents refrain from offending whereas others do not. The majority of prospective studies with these females adopt a risk management (instead of a strength-based empowering) perspective, thereby risking to overlook crucial keys to support females’ rehabilitation. The present study takes an important next step towards a strength-based empowering perspective on detained female adolescents by studying their quality of life (QoL) to explain offending outcomes in emerging adulthood, relying on the strength-based Good Lives Model (GLM) of offender rehabilitation. The study consists of a mixed method, long-term prospective design in a sample of 147 detained female adolescents: it includes a quantitative and qualitative follow-up measurement 4 years after detention (T4), building on prior measurements at the start (T0), during (T1-2) and 6 months after detention (T3). We aim to produce statistics about as well as in-depth insight into females’ own perspective on (i) developmental experiences impacting their QoL and offending behavior; (ii) capacities/obstacles and adopted (in)appropriate means in achieving their QoL; and (iii) (in)direct pathways from QoL to offending in emerging adulthood. This project will improve understanding of females’ QoL in relation to future offending behavior, and bears the promise to develop new, empowering insights that could improve rehabilitation theories. " "Protective factors for criminal recidivism in adolescents in community institutions: The role of quality of life." "Stijn Vandevelde" "Department of Special Needs Education" "Up until now, research and treatment have primarily focused on the identification of risk factors for criminal recidivism in adolescent offenders. Based on the Good Lives Model, this study aims at investigating the influence of quality of life and other protective factors, by means of a prospective cohort design in a sample of adolescents in a community institution (n=200). " "Playing in the domestic space - exploring the role of video games in the context of everyday life" "Veroline Cauberghe" "Department of Communication Sciences" "Using a multi-method approach this project aims to contribute to academic research concerning the use and the role video games play in people's everyday lives. It wil integrate two theories rooted in traditional media usage research: domestication theory and the model of media attendance. To take the dynamic nature of meaning-making into account, longitudinal and cross-sectional research will be performed." "Quantifying the sustainability of our foods in an uncertain and variable world: life cycle assessment of the apple chain from orchard to consumer" "Annemie Geeraerd Ameryckx" "Mechatronics, Biostatistics and Sensors (MeBioS)" "The need for sustainable production and consumption is strongly present in today’s society. To achieve this goal, a realistic quantification of environmental sustainability is needed. Calculating the environmental impact of products and processes can be done by conducting Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). The life cycle perspective ensures that all necessary inputs, processes and outputs are considered, and that environmental impacts are addressed at the point in the life cycle where they will most effectively reduce the overall impact. LCA results can guide the way for making decisions without the risk of burden shifting, but only if those results are robust and unambiguous. However, a few methodological shortcomings obstruct this, especially in the agri-food sector, such as only using central tendencies to calculate impacts thereby ignoring the possible range of input values; and the lack of consensus between the multiple possibilities that exist for allocating impacts between different products generated by the same system. In this PhD thesis, the focus lies on those two shortcomings using the apple agri-food chain as case study.Making conclusive decisions on what product or process is environmentally preferable is not possible when only using deterministic data. Yet, LCA results based on this kind of data is still being widely disseminated, meaning that uncertainty and variability are being ignored. Uncertainty and variability have a different origin and thus also a different implication, the combination is called “overall uncertainty”. While uncertainty shows lack of knowledge, which can be reduced, variability reflects the natural heterogeneity in the world, which will always be observed.Published LCA studied were assessed through a systematic review, to identify to which extent uncertainty and variability have been separately accounted for. This turned out to be very limited, with only eleven studies having some kind of visualization showing which dominates the results. All methods had drawbacks  attached to them. Two-dimensional Monte Carlo simulations (2DMC) was identified as a possible approach that allows to solve these drawbacks.2DMC was introduced in the Belgian apple chain, comparing Jonagold and Kanzi apples in the cultivation chain and comparing bulk and pre-packed apples in the post-harvest chain. 2DMC allows to separately portray uncertainty and variability in LCA studies in a clear and representative way. This can help decision makers in judging the robustness of differences in product comparisons, while also indicating how the overall uncertainty can be reduced. Either the decision maker can already robustly conclude that one product could be preferred over the other, or it might be that the uncertainty and/or variability does not yet allow this. In the case that uncertainty is dominating, more knowledge should be gathered before making any decisions. In contrast, if variability is dominating, the only way to possibly reduce the overall uncertainty would be by examining the production system and making physical changes in the system itself. However, the latter is not always possible or even wanted.The second necessity for making accurate comparisons using LCA, is the equivalence of the system boundaries of the two options. However, equivalent system boundaries are currently lacking when organic crop production systems are compared to more conventional ones. Generally, when residual products from livestock systems get a second life as organic fertilizers, the impact of producing those residual products are ascribed to the livestock system, thus the system where it originates from. Meaning that no production impacts of those organic fertilizers are allocated to organic cultivation, the system where it is used and very much needed. This is in contrast with mineral fertilizers, used in conventional crop production systems, for which the production impact is allocated to the system where it is used. This inconsistency between organic and conventional crop production can lead to skewed LCA results. Multiple procedures exist to still allocate production impacts of organic fertilizers to organic cultivation, however, these can lead to very different results.Those different allocation procedures were therefore applied in an LCA of organic apple cultivation, to see where the difficulties for each procedure lies and to assess how much the results can be influenced by the chosen procedure. In the end, mass allocation was selected as the best way to approximate reality if a representative mass allocation factor is chosen that reflects the function of the organic fertilizers. The influence of factors from outside the system is limited for this procedure.In conclusion, the results show that with the discussed methodological improvements, comparing products and processes to assess their relative environmental impacts will be much more robust and conclusive. Clear decisions are much needed on industry, consumer and policy level to guide the way to sustainable production and consumption."