A randomized prevention trial was conducted contrasting families who took part in the Strong African American Families Program (SAAF), a preventive intervention for rural African American mothers and their 11-year-olds, with control families. SAAF is based on a conceptual model positing that changes in intervention-targeted parenting behaviors…

Objectives: To test an original scale assessing perceived school climate for girls' physical activity in middle school girls. Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). Results: CFA retained 5 of 14 original items. A model with 2 correlated factors, perceptions about teachers' and boys' behaviors,…

Students from a school in Hong Kong (n = 199) responded to 22 items asking about their school motivation and aspirations in a survey. Structural equation models found four school motivation factors consistent with the task, effort, competition, and praise scales of the Inventory of School Motivation, one education aspiration factor, one career…

Couple cooperation is hypothesized to be essential in the resolution of interpersonal marital problems. Data from a sample of newlywed couples support this hypothesis as well as the validity of our measure of cooperation. We then test a model stipulating marital satisfaction and trust as antecedent conditions leading to cooperative problem solving…

Purpose: With the decline of some well-established firms, the diminishing competitive power of many companies in an increasingly globalized market and the need for organizational renewal and transformation, interest in organizational learning has grown. Senior managers in many organizations are convinced of the importance of improving learning in…

Data in social and behavioral sciences typically possess heavy tails. Structural equation modeling is commonly used in analyzing interrelations among variables of such data. Classical methods for structural equation modeling fit a proposed model to the sample covariance matrix, which can lead to very inefficient parameter estimates. By fitting a…

This empirical research examines the predictors of intended departure for tenured vs. nontenured full-time faculty at research and doctoral institutions across an array of disciplines. What are the characteristics of those who intend to leave their institutions? Do tenured and nontenured faculty show different patterns of intended departure? And…

According to mental speed theory of intelligence, the speed of information processing constitutes an important basis for cognitive abilities. However, the question, how mental speed relates to real world criteria, like school, academic, or job performance, is still unanswered. The aim of the study is to test an indirect speed-factor model in…

Using data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), we aimed to determine the causal ordering between mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement. Results of structural equation modelling showed that, across the entire junior and senior high school, prior low mathematics achievement significantly related to later high mathematics…

The objective of this study was to test our alternative interpretation of the separation-individuation hypothesis. This interpretation states that separation from the parents is not a precondition for individuation, but rather separation and individuation are two parallel processes of development during adolescence. We investigated our…

This study among 178 music teachers and 605 students from 16 different music schools examined the peak experience of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). On the basis of the literature, it is hypothesized that job resources, including autonomy, performance feedback, social support, and supervisory coaching have a positive influence on the balance…

In this study, the authors examined the effect of retirement on psychological and physical symptoms in 404 older male veterans who were taking part in an ongoing longitudinal study. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze symptom trajectories from preretirement, peri-retirement, and postretirement periods in veterans with either lifetime…

This study examined the definitional and statistical overlap among 4 key group therapeutic relationship constructs--group climate, cohesion, alliance, and empathy--across member-member, member-group, and member-leader relationships. Three multilevel structural equation models were tested using self-report measures completed by 662 participants…

In this 3-year prospective study (N = 458) spanning a transition to middle school, bidirectional associations between children's relations with schoolmates (social preference and impact) and behaviors (physical and relational aggression, prosocial behavior) were examined using structural equation modeling. Gender moderation of all estimated paths…

The present study investigated the role of identity in the relationship between family functioning and behavior problems in a sample of Hispanic immigrant early adolescents and their families. The sample consisted of 181 Hispanic immigrant adolescents (92 males, 89 females) and their participating caregivers (who were mostly mothers). Identity was…