Students' decisions to enter or persist in STEM courses is linked with their affective domain. The influence of factors impacting students' affective domain in introductory college chemistry classes, such as attitude, is often overlooked by instructors, who instead focus on students' mathematical abilities as sole predictors of academic…

An important question regards how we use environmental boundaries to anchor spatial representations during navigation. Behavioral and neurophysiological models appear to provide conflicting predictions, and this question has been difficult to answer because of technical challenges with testing navigation in novel, large-scale, realistic spatial…

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine if social cohesion mediates the effects of neighborhood and household-level socioeconomic status (SES), perceptions of neighborhood safety, and access to parks on mothers' engagement in physical activity (PA). Method: Secondary analyses were conducted on cross-sectional data from The…

In recent years, a principal supply shortage crisis has emerged in the USA. This problem has been exacerbated by an increase in principal departures, which has been found to be negatively related to school outcomes. While research exists on several determinants of principal turnover, any examination of the relationship between principals'…

The present study explores the causal link between school climate, school violence, and a school's general academic performance over time using a school-level, cross-lagged panel autoregressive modeling design. We hypothesized that reductions in school violence and climate improvement would lead to schools' overall improved academic performance.…

This study seeks to understand the factors that contribute to a type of student-faculty interaction known to have particular benefits for students, faculty mentorship. Using three-time-point data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, this study employed structural equation modeling to…

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by parental education and family income, is highly predictive of academic achievement, but little is known about how specific cognitive systems shape SES disparities in achievement outcomes. This study investigated the extent to which executive function (EF) mediated associations between parental…

Social media play a role in the lives of young adults (18-25 years old), but motivators and influences of this and similar sources on their money handling are not well-understood. This study examined their personal finance information source choices using a non-random online survey (N = 229). Results of structural equation modeling suggested that…

Using structural equation modeling, this study attempted to untangle the underlying mechanisms among student-faculty interaction, classroom engagement, and cognitive skills development by examining the role played by students' academic self-challenge and sense of belonging on the relationships among the variables. The study utilized data from the…

School belonging (i.e., social connectedness to school) has positive implications for academic achievement and well-being. However, few studies have examined the developmental antecedents of school belonging, particularly for students of Mexican origin. To address this gap in the research literature, the present study examined reciprocal relations…

Background: Between 9.5% and 31.3% of college students suffer from depression ("American college health association national college health assessment II: reference group executive summary spring 2013." "Amer. Coll. Health Assoc." 2013; Eagan K, Stolzenberg EB, Ramirez JJ, Aragon, MC, Suchard, RS, Hurtado S. "The American…

We examined civic engagement in middle childhood and the degree to which parents' civic beliefs (i.e., social trust and civic efficacy), civic participation, and socialization practices were associated with indicators of children's civic engagement (i.e., social responsibility and civic values). Survey data were collected from 359 racially,…

Despite recognition that youth civic engagement is multidimensional, different modeling approaches are rarely compared or tested for measurement invariance. Using a diverse sample of 2,467 elementary, middle, and high school-aged youth, we measured eight dimensions of civic engagement: social responsibility values, informal helping, political…

This longitudinal study used latent growth curve modeling to investigate English literacy development in a sample of Spanish-speaking language minority students from third through eighth grade. This study also compared the sample's literacy development to the entire population of California students using state standardized test data. Second, this…

Many studies have investigated how people perceive others' self-presentation styles (such as enhancement and effacement) in forming first impressions and how culture influences the process. Most of those studies have, however, investigated self-presentation styles in the context of informal and intimate interpersonal relations. Few studies have…