Background: Youth obesity in the United States is a major health concern. Obesity can be reduced by increasing health-promoting behaviors. Purpose: The goals of the present study were to (1) identify the strongest motivators of and barriers to health-promoting behaviors among a culturally diverse group of middle and high school students and (2)…

Objective: Exercise correlates with alcohol use, but the nature of this relation and the extent to which it is maladaptive remains unclear. Urgency and motives for engaging in drinking and exercise might indicate when these behaviors are problematic. The current study examined whether urgency moderated the association between exercise motivated by…

Background: The purpose is to determine if altering school breakfast policies and the school breakfast environment will positively impact adolescent beliefs of the barriers and benefits of eating breakfast. Methods: There were 904 adolescents from 16 rural high schools, Minnesota, in the BreakFAST Study who reported eating breakfast fewer than 4…

Participants included 483 undergraduate drinkers who were assessed on drinking motives and alcohol behaviors. Results indicated differences in coping drinking motives and alcohol-related negative consequences between first-generation college students (FGCS) and continuing generation college students (CGCS) status depended on sex. Implications for…

This study focused on the ability to experience a high ratio of positive to negative emotions in 807 Israeli adolescents aged 12 to 15 years (50% girls). While considering possible gender differences, we tested a model positing that adolescents' self-control skills would link to their positivity ratio and indirectly through perceived social…

Parental involvement plays a critical role in the development of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and can promote children's developmental and educational outcomes. This study aimed to compare mothers and fathers of children with ASD's social support and education levels in relation to their level of involvement. Participants included…

This paper describes a social skills programme implemented to enhance the social competence of Primary-one students in order to ensure a smooth adjustment after transition from kindergarten to a formal school learning environment. The participants were 122 students (64 boys and 58 girls; mean age 6.17 years, SD = 0.29 years) newly enrolled in a…

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for childhood anxiety is effective in schools; however, researchers have reported mixed results and expressed concerns regarding sociocultural differences in treating childhood anxiety. This study examined the efficacy of the FRIENDS program, which is a CBT program used at a universal school level. Students (N =…

Previous research finds that children experience a range of school readiness challenges (e.g., Chartier, Walker, & Naimark, 2010; Zill, 1999). Such challenges vary by children's gender, temperament, and participation in school-based interventions (e.g., Mullola et al., 2011; Bramlett, Scott, Rowell, 2000). However, the examination of child…

Bystander intervention has been an effective strategy for crime prevention and has been successful in the context of campus sexual assault. Less is known about the extent to which individual-level factors correlate with intervention behavior in situations of intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual harassment. The present study used a sample of…

Most universities provide career development services to their students. Research on the effectiveness of these services in promoting retention and graduation is minimal and focused on global outcomes rather than differences among participants. Research to date suggests that between three and nine clusters (groups) of individuals would benefit…

Background: Some adolescents are victims of negative appearance-related feedback, and this may have lasting adverse effects on their self-evaluation. The aim of this study was to examine the frequency and impact of appearance teasing across sex and weight status. Methods: The participants were 570 Czech adolescents (47.9% girls) evaluated at age…

Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the school-based "My Body and I" program which was designed to help girls and boys to cope better with inevitable pubertal body changes. Method: Using a pre-post treatment-control design with 25 treatment and 17 control classes from schools in Germany and France (484 boys, 485 girls;…

A two-group pretest-post-test quasi-experiment was conducted to analyze the impact of curriculum infusion of the social norms approach on students' alcohol perceptions and behaviors. This study extended previous research by examining two types of curriculum infusion, information only (IO) and service learning (SL). Also, owing to variations in…

Children practice their spatial skills when playing with spatial toys, such as construction materials, board games, and puzzles. Sex and SES differences are observed in the engagement in such spatial play activities at home, which relate to individual differences in spatial performance. The current study investigated the effects of explicitly…