Lebanon has been participating in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study assessment (TIMSS) since 2003, however, data indicate a continuous decline in performance of Grade 8 students. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors critical to the achievement of Lebanese Grade 8 students and investigate the reasons for their…

This paper discusses the contributions of variables commonly used within the status attainment and blocked opportunities models in addition to school context variables in predicting pupils' aspirations for higher education prior to the transition to differentiated upper secondary education in Croatia (14-15 years). The findings, arising from a…

Guided by the life course perspective, this study investigated the developmental antecedents of contact, closeness/warmth, and negativity in young adults' relationships with their parents. Taking the developmental systems approach, we considered interindividual differences in not only initial levels of parenting quality in early adolescence (Grade…

The present study used a genetically informed design of twins raised in the same family (375 monozygotic and 290 dizygotic twins; 50.2% girls) to examine the association between adolescents' genetic risk for depressive symptoms and the course of the parent-child relationship quality throughout adolescence. Depressive symptoms and the quality of…

This study examined the development of adolescents' self-concept of ability in mathematics and literacy during secondary school, and the role that mothers' and fathers' beliefs concerning their child's abilities play in this development. Also examined was whether the role of mothers' and fathers' beliefs about their adolescent child's ability in…

The aspirational model resulted from the authors' secondary analysis of the Mother/Child (M/C) test block from the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress restricted data that examined the responses of the national sample of 8th-grade students (n = 1648). This test block presented no artmaking task and consisted of the same 13 questions…

Maternal and paternal psychological control, peer attitudes, and the interaction of psychological control and peer attitudes at age 13 were examined as predictors of risky sexual behavior before age 16 in a community sample of 181 youth followed from age 13 to 16. Maternal psychological control moderated the link between peer attitudes and sexual…

We evaluated maternal gatekeeping attitudes as a mediator of the relation between marital problems and father-child relationships in 3 waves when children were in Grades 7-10. We assessed each parent's contribution to the marital problems experienced by the couple. Findings from mediational and cross-lagged structural equation models revealed that…

Exploring a unique region concerning educational reforms in the past 20?years, the present study empirically investigates the attitudes towards parental involvement in school life in a comparative perspective of south-eastern European (SEE) countries for the 2008/2009 school year. Based on a multiple regression model for nine different countries,…

Individual differences in trajectories of anxious withdrawal were examined from Grades 5 to 8 across the transition to middle school in a community sample (N = 283), using General Growth Mixture Modeling. Three distinct pathways of anxious withdrawal were identified: "low-stable" (78%), "high-decreasing" (12%), and…

The middle school years are a period of increased risk for youths' engagement in antisocial behaviors, substance use, and affiliation with deviant peers (Dishion & Patterson, 2006). This study examined the specific role of parental monitoring and of family relationships (mother, father, and sibling) that are all critical to the deterrence of…

The current study tested sex-specific pathways to early puberty, sexual debut, and sexual risk taking, as specified by an integrated evolutionary-developmental model of adolescent sexual development and behavior. In a prospective study of 238 adolescents (n = 129 girls and n = 109 boys) followed from approximately 12-18 years of age, we tested for…

This study examined whether a transactional interpersonal life stress model helps to explain the continuity in depression over time in girls. Youth (86 girls, 81 boys; M age = 12.41, SD = 1.19) and their caregivers participated in a three-wave longitudinal study. Depression and episodic life stress were assessed with semistructured interviews.…

This paper examines conditional and reporter effects of parental responsiveness using survey data from White 8th to 12th graders (N = 440) and their parents (N = 511). Adolescent reports of maternal and paternal responsiveness predicted higher GPAs, fewer delinquent behaviors, and less internal distress. Mothers' and fathers' reports of…

An analysis was carried out to examine the relative effect of being in a single-parent, mother-only or father-only family for African-American girls in 8th grade in 1988 on 12th grade educational achievements in 1992 and two years after high school in 1994. The result showed that for these African-American girls parental configuration was not as…