CfP: Measurement of the Push and Pull Factors of Mental Health (Article Collection)

Article Collection Editors: Hanna Christiansen (Philipps University Marburg, Germany), Malte Schwinger (Philipps University Marburg, Germany), Gülay Karadere (Leibniz Institute for Psychology, Germany), Katarina Blask (Leibniz Institute for Psychology, Germany)

Measurement of the Push and Pull Factors of Mental Health
Mental health has attracted increased attention in the recent past, whether in the form of severe mental health issues related to the Covid19-pandemic or refugees fleeing war in their home countries. These recent developments did not only increase awareness for the push and pull factors of mental health across the whole life span, but also fuelled a multitude of research projects. Topics range from improving mental health across the lifespan, to developing new measurement methods that take into account individual developmental trajectories, to various prevention-oriented topics.

In order to address these diverse topics being of the utmost importance, not only for the social sciences and psychology, but also economics and political sciences, new conceptual frameworks and methods covering the diverse push and pull factors for mental health issues are needed. In particular, there is a need to think about new or revised process models of mental health putting a stronger focus on individual trajectories. In addition, new measurement methods are needed to collect robust data that will provide a valuable basis for treatments taking into account present individual development trajectories and situations, as well as future research and policy decisions.

Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences (MISS) publishes a special collection of articles on the measurement of the push and pull factors of mental health. The collection of articles aims to provide a platform for the publication of new empirical evidence and methods that address these risk- and prevention-oriented factors of mental health in the context of the various social and political domains that are part of our society today.

We invite researchers to submit conceptual and empirical work related to the following topics:

• Individual-centred methods (e.g., surveys, questionnaires, interview guides, scales, etc.) to assess risk and prevention factors of mental health
• Psychometric studies on new measurement instruments targeted at the assessment of push and pull factors of mental health constructs
• Impact and measurement of present socio-political developments (e.g., increasing digitization of communication processes) that have a positive or negative impact on mental health

We are particularly interested in papers that discuss new paths of measuring mental health, taking into account the individual push and pull factors that might have an impact.  In this context we welcome contributions presenting new measurement instruments focusing on psychometric properties as reliability and validity, as well as empirical studies targeted at providing evidence for a new measurement approach.

For inquiries regarding the Call for Papers, the suitability of specific submissions, and any other concerns, please contact the Lead Guest Editor, Hanna Christiansen.

Submission instructions
The complete manuscript should be submitted through the journal submission system. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have carefully read the submission guidelines for Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences (MISS). Manuscripts submitted in response to this call for papers will most likely represent the article type called "New Measurement instrument" or “Validation of Measurement Instruments”. In addition, indicate within your cover letter and upon submission that you wish your manuscript to be considered as part of the article collection on the Measurement of the push and pull factors of mental health. All submissions will undergo rigorous peer review and accepted articles will be published within the journal as a collection. MISS supports open science standards and strongly encourages authors to supplement their submission by statistical analysis code (R code, Mplus code, Stata code, etc.). To make your test instruments available for the scientific community you can publish all test relevant files in the Open Test Archive or ZIS.