We created and tested a family-based intervention with families of children in Grades 1 and 2 with reading and behavioral difficulties to investigate its impact on text comprehension. Developed with input from parents, reading experts, and behavior specialists, Family-RISE (Reading Intervention with Supports for Engagement) integrates…

As many as 1 in 5 youth in the United States experience social, emotional, and behavioral problems. However, many students with mental health concerns are unidentified and do not receive adequate care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the factor structure, measurement invariance, and the concurrent and predictive validity of the Early…

This study examined the variance in teacher ratings attributable to teacher, occasion, and child on the original Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC). Teachers rated approximately 1,100 girls (52%) and boys (48%) at four public elementary schools over 3 years. About half of the students were rated twice and about a seventh 3 times.…

Aggressive, violent, and disruptive behaviour among Belize youth is disproportionately high. The present study evaluated a school-based positive youth development program (Positive Action) using a clustered RCT. The aim of the study sought to examine post-treatment positive youth development competencies (i.e. social-emotional character…

Deception is a common phenomenon in everyday life, yet some people generally lie more than others and some people consider lying more acceptable than others do. Current knowledge about lie acceptability across development or about the individual differences in emotion or personality which shape it is still in an incipient stage. We aimed to expand…

School-based universal screening for behavioral/emotional risk is a necessary first step in the identification of students who might need services within a behavioral response to intervention model. When choosing among the available screening measures, psychometric information such as reliability and validity of the scores is critical to inform…

Prevention scientists recognize that implementing effective prevention practices and programs responsive to the needs of individuals but based solely upon the findings from variable-centered methods presents several limitations due to numerous risk factors, pathways, and unobserved influences. One such understudied influence that is masked by…

Therapeutic alliance is associated with treatment outcomes across a diverse range of intervention models and clinical populations. Likewise, the perceived quality of working alliance in adult psychotherapy has been a consistent predictor of engagement, while research with children is limited. This study draws from a sample of 180 children who were…

The goal of this project was to evaluate the effects of an innovative intervention model created specifically for youth in alternative school settings. The Motivational Interviewing with At-Risk Students (MARS) Mentoring Program is a unique intervention rooted in self-determination and behavior modification theories and delivered through a…

The current study examined between-teacher variance in teacher ratings of student behavioral and emotional risk to identify student, teacher and classroom characteristics that predict such differences and can be considered in future research and practice. Data were taken from seven elementary schools in one school district implementing universal…

Given the high prevalence of Tier 2 behavioral intervention use and calls to examine mediation and moderation effects on treatment for children, this study tested the mediation effect of the daily progress report and moderation effects of coach-student, teacher-student, and student-teacher relationships and their interactions for 95 elementary…

Responsive service delivery frameworks rely on the use of screening approaches to identify students in need of support and to guide subsequent assessment and intervention efforts. However, limited empirical investigations have been directed to informing how often screening should occur for social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties in school…

To describe and facilitate the identification of child school behavior patterns, we developed a typology of child school behavior (ages 6-11 years) using the norming data (N = 2,338) for the second edition of the Behavior Assessment System for Children Teacher Rating-Child form). Latent profile analysis was conducted with the entire data set,…

Students with elevated levels of risk require targeted Tier 2 behavioral interventions that are efficient and effective to prevent the need for more intensive, special education supports. Although Tier 2 is a critical component of multi-tiered systems of support, a paucity of research exists regarding how best to provide evidence-based Tier 2…

Despite schools increasingly adopting multitiered systems of support (MTSS) for prevention and intervention of mental health concerns, many are slow to adopt universal mental health screening (UMHS), a core MTSS feature, due to concerns about their limited capacity to meet the needs of all identified. In this study, we examined differences in the…