Best friend expected emotion socialization responses were examined as a potential explanation for the link between social anxiety and youths' friendship quality and dysfunctional emotion regulation (ER). A community sample of 202 young adolescents ([X-bar][subscript age] = 12.66; 52.5% girls, 75.7% White) within 101 same-sex, reciprocated best…

Children whose parents are warm and responsive yet also set limits and have reasonable expectations for their children tend to have better outcomes than their peers whose parents show less warmth and responsiveness, have low expectations, or both. Parenting behavior is related to family race and children's sex, age, and cognitive ability. However,…

One purpose of this study was to determine whether patterns existed in pre-high school students' motivation-related perceptions of their science classes. Another purpose was to examine the extent to which these patterns were related to their science identification, gender, grade level, class effort, and intentions to persist in science. We…

Adolescence is characterized by increasing incidence of health risk behaviors, including experimentation with drugs and alcohol. To fill the gap in our understanding of the associations between risky decision-making and health risk behaviors, we investigated associations between laboratory-based risky decision-making using the Stoplight task and…

Callous-unemotional (CU) behavior has been linked to behavior problems in children and adolescents. However, few studies have examined whether CU behavior in "early childhood" predicts behavior problems or CU behavior in "late childhood". This study examined whether indicators of CU behavior at ages 2-4 predicted aggression,…

Virginia's SHARP logger program is a Cooperative Extension program currently providing training to over 1,500 loggers, foresters, and others. We conducted a mail survey of SHARP loggers to characterize program participants, assess programming needs, and evaluate program effectiveness. Results indicate a diverse group of participants in terms of…

HIV, AIDS, STIs, and unwanted pregnancy continue to impact young adults in the U.S. at a disproportionate rate, particularly during the college years. Attributional style (i.e., locus of control) influences one's HIV risk. Internal locus of control indicates a lower risk of HIV infection, whereas an external locus of control signals an increased…

The extent to which smaller learning communities' (SLCs) focus on academic press and strong social relationships affects academic engagement among 9th graders in urban high schools was investigated. Data were collected through classroom observations, student questionnaires, and focus groups with teachers. Data were analyzed using descriptive…

Prior research suggests that parenting affects children's relationships, including those with teachers, although there is variation across individuals in such effects. Given evidence suggesting that oxytocin may be particularly important for the quality of social relationships, we tested the hypotheses (a) that change in parenting from 4 to 6…

Relations between paternal autonomy support and four aspects of adolescent social competence and responsibility at age 16 were examined using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. With controls on maternal autonomy support, significant relations were observed between paternal autonomy support and three of the four…

Quantitative analysis was used to investigate relationships between sense of class community and perceived learning among alternative licensure candidates (N = 58) based on their scores from two separate standardized instruments measuring the constructs. Study results provide evidence that relationships do indeed exist and that differences between…

The purpose of this study was to describe secondary teachers' formative assessment practices and to examine the relationship of these practices to student motivation. The sample included 3,242 students and 161 grade 6-12 teachers. Teachers and students completed self-report questionnaires that focused on both formative assessment and motivation…

Despite general consensus over the value of measuring self-reported offending, discrepancies exist in methods of scoring self-reported offending and the length of the reference period over which offending is assessed. This analysis compared the concurrent interassociations and longitudinal predictive strength of diversity, frequency, and severity…

Research Findings: We examined associations among Anglo acculturation, Latino enculturation, maternal beliefs, mother-child emotion talk, and emotion understanding in 40 Latino preschool-age children and their mothers. Mothers self-reported Anglo acculturation, Latino enculturation, and beliefs about the value/danger of children's emotions and…

This study examined the relationship of self-concept, school belonging, school engagement to school performance of Caucasian- and African-American students. The main purpose is to assess the ethnicity-based differences in these psycho-social constructs and to explore their differential relationship to school achievement in high-school students…