The present study examined civic engagement--volunteering and political activism--among 129 African American young adults from an urban community. The proposed model considered factors that motivate young adults to participate in civic activities as well as barriers that might inhibit involvement. Drawing upon social cognitive theory, this study…

Sex differences have been previously found in cognitive and affective predictors of math achievement, including spatial skills and math attitudes. It is important to determine whether there are sex differences not only in the predictors themselves, but also in the nature of their relation to math achievement. The present paper examined spatial…

Attachment theory provides an interesting background for thinking about externalizing behavior (EB) in early childhood and for understanding how parenting influences the child's outcomes. The study examined how attachment and parenting could be combined to explain preschoolers' EB. Data were collected from 117 preschoolers aged from 4 to 6…

Parents and children hold negative attitudes about obesity, but little is known about individual differences in obesity stigma. The current study examined authoritarian parenting style, beliefs about the controllability of weight and fear of fat in relation to mothers' dislike of overweight individuals. Factors related to children's weight…

The current study examined 5 to 11-year-old European American children's (N = 90) attitudes regarding immigrants, immigration policy, and what it means to be an American. The majority of children in the sample (from a predominantly European American community) held strong American identities and had distinct ideas about what it means to be an…

Developmental instability characterizes the late teens and twenties in today's late-modern society. The present study (a) focused on the link between instability and both general (i.e., self-esteem and depressive symptoms) and work-related outcomes (i.e., work engagement and burnout) and (b) investigated the possible moderating role of identity…

This article describes the phonological awareness and English writing skills among a sample of 297 Singaporean kindergarten children, stratified by ethnicity (Chinese, Malay, and Indian), and examines the relationship between oral language and writing skills in this multilingual population. Overall, Singaporean kindergartners, nearly all of whom…

This study utilized a multi-informant approach to investigate the concurrent association between peer victimization and functioning at school in a predominantly Latino sample of 135 children (55 boys; 80 girls) in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. The children attended elementary schools in economically distressed urban neighborhoods.…

The present study used an interpersonal theoretical perspective to examine the interactions between Dutch teachers and kindergartners. Interpersonal theory provides explanations for dyadic interaction behaviors by stating that complementary behaviors (dissimilar in terms of control, and similar in terms of affiliation) elicit and sustain each…

Based on longitudinal multilevel modeling and using a multi-informant strategy, this study examines trajectories of externalizing problem behavior (EPB) in childhood as predicted by parental behavior (absolute level of parenting [ALP] and parental differential treatment [PDT]), parental self-efficacy (PSE), child personality and sibling…

Longitudinal associations among different types of organized activity involvement, problem peer associations, and cigarette smoking were examined in a sample of 1040 adolescents (mean age = 15.62 at baseline, 16.89 at 15-month assessment, 17.59 at 24 months) enriched for smoking experimentation (83% had tried smoking). A structural equation model…

This study assessed whether infant-directed videos designed to promote parent-child interactions actually support such engagement. Parents watched videos from the "Baby Einstein" or the "Sesame Beginnings" series for 2 weeks at home with their 12- or 18-month-old infants. "Baby Einstein" encourages parents to label objects and actions; "Sesame…

This study examined the influence of discrimination awareness on children's occupational interests. Participants included 46 African American children aged 10 to 13. Children completed pretest measures of perceptions of occupational racial discrimination, discrimination-related self-efficacy beliefs, occupational outcome expectations, and the…

Drawing upon an ethnically and socio-economically diverse sample of 323 7th grade students from twelve urban schools within one school district, this mixed method study examined early adolescents' self-reported health risk behaviors as related to their conflict resolution strategies and their school's conflict resolution climate. Survey data…

We evaluated the psychometric properties of the Responses to Stress Questionnaire (RSQ; Connor-Smith, Compas, Saltzman, Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2000) in a sample of Bosnian youth (N = 665; age = 15 to 20 years) five years post-war. Participants reported on their coping and involuntary responses to post-war stressors including trauma reminders, loss…