The purpose of this study was to establish construct validity of a college and career readiness measure using a sample of youth with (n = 356) and without (n = 1,599) disabilities from five high schools across three U.S. states. We established content validity through expert item review, structural validity through initial field-testing, and…

Behavioral and emotional problems among children and adolescents can lead to numerous negative outcomes without intervention. From a prevention standpoint, screening for behavioral and emotional risk is an important step toward identifying such problems before the point of diagnosis or referral. The present study conducted a k-means cluster…

The authors compared 3 measures of readiness to change alcohol use commonly used in clinical research and practice with adolescents: the Readiness Ruler, the SOCRATES (subscales of Recognition and Taking Steps), and a Staging Algorithm. The analysis sample consisted of 161 male and female adolescents presenting for intensive outpatient…

This study investigated the accuracy of brief anxiety scales for non-treatment-seeking youth with autism spectrum disorder. In all, 54 youth (7-17?years; IQ: 67-158) with autism spectrum disorder and their parents completed (a) an expanded version of the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule--Child/Parent designed to capture typical and atypical…

Adopting a constructivist perspective of adolescent development, we argue adolescents' perceptions of "being known" reflect teachers' authentic recognition of adolescents' multiple emerging identities. As such, adolescent perceptions of being known are a distinct factor associated with high school students' engagement in school. A mixed…

Social skills are an important part of development, and deficits in this area have long-term impacts on a child. As a result, clinicians should include a measure of social skills as part of a comprehensive assessment. There are a few well-researched measures of social skills that are currently used, including the Matson Evaluation of Social Skills…

The purpose of this paper was to examine the psychometric properties of a non-word repetition task (NRT), the Late-8 Non-word Repetition Task (L8NRT). This task was designed similarly to the NRT, but contains only Late-8 consonants to increase articulatory demands and avoid ceiling effects in studies with adolescents and adults. Thirty college…

The present study was designed to investigate the discriminant validity of the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders (DSMD; Naglieri, LeBuffe, & Pfeiffer, 1994) in relation to a widely used behavior rating scale, the Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991), in children and adolescents with emotional disturbance (ED). A matched sample of 148…

With the recently passed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004), federal law encourages monitoring student progress and gauging responsiveness to instruction. The Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF; Mather, Hammill, Allen, & Roberts, 2004) is a group-administered test that holds promise for monitoring student progress.…

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…