The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting stay-at-home orders created a need for assessing elementary, middle, and high school students' experienced stressors associated with the coronavirus situation. In collaboration with a school district wanting information about their students' well-being during the pandemic school shut-down, the current study…

The current study investigated the associations among student perceptions of COVID-19 stress, internalizing problems, and school social support (teacher and classmate support) and how these relations differed across elementary/middle and high school students. Based on data from 526 4th- through 12th-grade students from a school district in the…

COVID-19 began to spread all over the world in the Spring of 2020. All schools, including the institutions serving students with special needs, were closed to decrease the spread of the virus. The schools had to shift to online education, which was a new experience for most students. In addition to the negative effects of the pandemic itself, the…

Friendships can provide a critical buffer against stress for youth, but the extent to which they serve this role depends on whether they provide resources that youth value most. These valued provisions may differ for girls and boys and across stages of development. This study examined whether gender differences in friendship values intensify…

Becoming a victim of verbal and social bullying in middle school can lead to illness, psychological stress, and maladjustment. The coping strategies that students utilize when they are bullied may influence the likelihood and severity of these negative effects. In this study, we examined the predictions made by students in two middle schools about…

Prior research from Norway and Japan has demonstrated positive relationships between stress and bullying--The more stress students experience, the more they engage in bullying. The modest correlations, however, suggest that other variables may moderate the stress-bullying link, serving as protective factors that make such negative responses to…

Consistent with a Diathesis × Stress model, it was hypothesized that anxious solitude (individual vulnerability) and the middle school transition (environmental stress) would jointly predict peer exclusion and victimization trajectories. Youth (N = 688) were followed from 3rd through 7th grade, with the middle school transition in 6th grade.…

Middle school students are in even more need of social and emotional support due to the cognitive, social, and emotional changes occurring at this stage of their development (Caskey & Anfara, 2014), and their teachers are key players in providing what is needed. Unfortunately, there are few Institutions of Higher Education that offer programs…

This study examines whether mothers' or adolescents' expectations concerning "storm and stress" behaviors at adolescence predict subsequent real or perceived adolescent behavior and attributes during the early years of adolescence. The study used a short-term longitudinal design. Participants were 6th- and 7th-grade adolescents and their mothers…

This study uses intraindividual variability and change methods to test theoretical accounts of self-concept and its change across time and context and to test the developmental implications of this variability. The 5-year longitudinal study of 541 youths in a rural Pennsylvania community from 3rd through 7th grade included twice-yearly assessments…

School closure and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic have posed several challenges to children. Drawing upon the social--ecological framework, in this preliminary study, we tested what factors may help to explain students' difficulties with distance learning during COVID-19 lockdown, by analyzing family, school, and individual…

The study investigated age and gender effects on coping with common stressors among 494 Austrian children and adolescents (age 8-14 years). Participants were subdivided into subgroups of late children comprising third and fourth graders, early adolescents consisting of fifth and sixth graders, and middle adolescents including seventh graders.…

Background: Using the Chinese version of the Global School-based Health Survey (GSHS), this article describes the prevalence of being bullied among a nationally representative sample of Chinese students in grades 6-10 and explores the relationships between being bullied and selected indicators of psychosocial adjustment. Methods: A total of 9015…

Research on bullying is an important avenue for understanding the social integration of students in special education. Focused on 3,305 students who self-reported victimization of two to three times per month or more, this study compared the pattern of verbal, relational, and physical bullying among students in general education and special…

Judgments about the quality of students' experience of school generally focus on their academic performance and indeed this is an important indicator but closer attention needs to be paid to equally important, more broadly based outcomes that include social/emotional adjustment as they also are shown to impact on students' lives at, and beyond…