The Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) scale has been used for more than 20 years to measure students' sense of school belonging, yet its psychometric properties have had limited examination with pre-adolescent children. This study investigated the utility and psychometrics of the PSSM in three primary school samples from the United…

Community contexts are important ecological settings related to problem behavior and positive youth development (PYD). While substantial work has focused on neighborhood disadvantage, the current study explores the role of community assets, specifically linkages to important institutional resources and people in those settings. These concepts are…

Using Attribution Theory as a theoretical framework, this study explored the role of forgiveness in impacting student nonverbal responsiveness, out-of-class communication (OCC), and perceptions of cognitive and affective learning following instructor misbehavior. Additionally, the role of instructor nonverbal immediacy was examined. Participants…

Research Findings: Supportive mother-child interactions promote the development of social-emotional competence. Poverty and other associated psychosocial risk factors have a negative impact on mother-child interaction. In spite of Latino children being disproportionately represented among children living in poverty, research on mother-child…

Problem behavior theory predicts that adolescent problem behaviors are manifestations of a single behavioral syndrome. This study tested the validity of the theory across racial groups. Results indicate that multiple pathways are necessary to account for the problem behaviors and they support previous research indicating system response bias in…