Objectives: This pilot study developed an adventure-based cognitive behavioral intervention (aCBI) program and tests its effectiveness in improving the mental health of Chinese university students in Hong Kong. Method: A total of 217 undergraduate students participated in an aCBI program in the form of an interdisciplinary general education course in a university in Hong Kong. A battery of standardized online questionnaires was administered to the students before joining and upon completion of the course, and at a 3-month follow-up test. Results: The participants showed a significant reduction of psychological distress, perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and negative thoughts and emotions and a significant increase of positive thoughts upon immediate completion of the program. The positive effects maintained at the 3-month follow-up test. Conclusion: The integration of cognitive behavioral intervention and adventure training in a class setting might be an effective and feasible approach for the mental health counseling of university students. Copyright ©2021 SAGE Publications.

Purpose:Social networks provide convenient communication and connection among people, and they have become essential in college students' lives. However, problems also come along with increasing concern about trust and privacy issues. This research attempts to investigate the trust and privacy perceptions of university students when using social networks for learning purposes.Design/methodology/approach:This paper investigated the differences in trust and privacy perceptions between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students through an online survey with 96 subjects in Hong Kong. The authors used the Mann–Whitney U test to compare the differences between the responses provided by UG and PG subjects.Findings:The authors found that both PG and UG students were generally satisfied with the use of social networking sites (SNSs) for learning. However, PG subjects used SNSs more for learning and were more willing to exchange with classmates than UG and PG perceived higher value of SNSs than UG students. The authors also found a relative lack of privacy awareness of UG students.Practical implicationsBased on the study’s findings, the authors made some recommendations about the application of SNSs for learning purposes. The authors also suggest universities provide more guidance and training to students on the privacy issues of SNSs.Originality/value:Even though some previous studies have focused on studying privacy and trust issues on SNSs, studies that aim at university students in the context of Asia–Pacific are rather limited, especially university students' own trust and privacy perceptions on using SNSs for learning purposes. Copyright © 2021 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

This paper explores the influence of friendship in mainland Chinese (MC) students’ adaptation to studying in Hong Kong. The number of MC students in Hong Kong has amounted to 18,887 in 2016, which makes it necessary for universities to cater for these students’ adaptation. Research has identified social-cultural differences between MC students and their local peers despite shared traditional Chinese cultural root. Existing studies have shown that international students can adapt to the new culture better and be more confident by making cross-cultural friends. Previous research has mainly focused on MC students’ difficulties in their adaptation, but how friendship influences their adaptation is still under-researched. This paper addresses the research questions: (1) What strategies do mainland students adopt to establish friendships during their study in Hong Kong? (2) What are the facilitating and hindering factors for mainland students to establish friendship? (3) How can friendship help mainland students adapt to their study and life in Hong Kong? A total of 24 MC university students studying in Hong Kong were interviewed. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The findings show that friendship plays an important role in MC students’ adaptation to studying in Hong Kong, especially regarding daily life routines, such as how to deal with visa issues and navigate the university’s course selection system. MC students build friendships mainly through taking part in social and academic learning activities. Nonetheless, political-social conflicts between Hong Kong and Mainland China have, to a certain extent, hindered friendship establishment between MC and local students. Copyright © 2018 HKERA International Conference.

Social and emotional dynamics have an impact on students' learning processes in online-learning situations. This study explores university students' emotions and trust levels resulting from collaborative communication behaviors when they interacted as part of a Food and Tourism course in Taiwan and Hong Kong. More specifically, students' emotions and trust levels were investigated and were founded to have varied over the course of the study. Results show that the Taiwan-based participants seemed to express their emotions more strongly than the Hong Kong-based ones. Both the Hong Kong and Taiwan groups generally felt satisfied, excited and curious, whereas they were sometimes perceived to be dispirited, insecure and angry while the project was in progress and at the end of the project. The three sources that caused most emotional comment were "self", "social" and "others". When it came to dealing with emotion, most students tried to solve problems by themselves. They believed that they had the ability to solve the problems and held themselves responsible for dealing with their own emotions. The pair trust survey shows that both groups gave positive responses for all items, but there seemed to be a gap between the perception of pair trust and the reality of dealing with emotion.
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