Students become increasingly disconnected from their schools across the middle school years, but little is known about the factors contributing to changes in school connectedness. This study examined the time-invariant and time-varying roles of depressive symptoms and externalizing problems in trajectories of student-perceived school connectedness…

Parenting a child with autism may differentially affect mothers and fathers. Existing studies of mother-father differences often ignore the interdependence of data within families. We investigated gender differences within-families using multilevel linear modeling. Mothers and fathers of children with autism (161 couples) reported on their own…

Research on sex differences in antisocial behaviour may shed light on the causes of childhood antisocial behaviour. Using a longitudinal design, we tested whether there were sex differences in the amount of harsh discipline children received or in the effect of harsh discipline and whether this accounted for sex differences in later conduct…

This study tested assumptions and conclusions reached in an earlier confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) study of the social competence (SC) construct for preschool children. Two samples (total N = 408; a new Portuguese sample and one from US samples that had participated in the original study) contributed data. Seven SC indicators were tested for…

Evidence-based parent-training programmes aim to reduce child behaviour problems; however, the effects of these programmes are often limited by poor participation rates. This study proposes a model of parent, child and family factors related to parental participation in parenting interventions. A computer-assisted telephone interview was used to…