The transition from preschool to elementary school requires high adaptive behaviours. Our study's aim is to analyze the reciprocal effects between self-regulation and behaviour problems during this transitional phase. Study results are based on longitudinal data collected at preschool and elementary school. Children's level of behaviour problems…

The transition from secondary to higher education is a challenging process, in which the development of students' motivation plays a pivotal role. The current study examines whether self-efficacy--and how it develops--is able to explain the growth in motivation. The current longitudinal study included five waves, across a period of 25 months (i.e.…

Extracurricular activities represent a key setting for prevention and promoting positive youth development. However, to date, a crucial aspect of activity participation--activity breadth (participation in a variety of extracurricular settings)--has been largely overlooked as a resource for bolstering adolescents' long-term adjustment, especially…

This study investigates whether friendship quality, academic achievement, and mastery goal orientation predict each other across the transition to middle school. Participants were 146 Latino students (75 girls) followed from the end of elementary school through the first year of middle school. Measures included positive and negative friendship…

Immigrant youth differ in their adaptation, which is judged on the basis of how well they deal with developmental and acculturative tasks. While immigrant adolescents are faced with the realities of 2 different cultures, they also have to master age-salient tasks, such as self-efficacy and identity development. To get a better insight into the…

Social responsibility can be defined as a set of prosocial values representing personal commitments to contribute to community and society. Little is known about developmental change--and predictors of that change--in social responsibility during adolescence. The present study used an accelerated longitudinal research design to investigate the…

This longitudinal study of adolescents in the first year of secondary school, examined the relationship between psychological functioning at the beginning of year 7 (mean age 11.25 years) with attainment at the end of year 7 (mean age 11.78 years). Depressive symptoms, school liking and conduct problems predicted lower attainment across time…

Adolescents' expectations about the timing of adult role transitions have the potential to shape their actual transitions, setting the stage for their adult lives. Although expectations about timing emerge by early adolescence, little is known about how these expectations develop across adolescence. This longitudinal study examined developmental…

This longitudinal study builds on research addressing changes in achievement goal orientations (AG) across the transition to middle school. We had two objectives. The first was to identify and describe different development trajectories of AG (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) from the last year of elementary school (Grade…

In this paper, we review findings from Project Competence on the nature of personality development from middle childhood through the early adult years and place these findings in the context of current research on temperament and personality traits. In a series of studies using data drawn from the Project Competence longitudinal project, we have…

In this study an attempt was made to obtain a developmental dimension for estimating longitudinal development on the basis of cross-sectional data. To check the validity of this approach, the cross-sectional data were compared with true longitudinal data. Forty-three public school children were given a series of conservation tasks in four…