This study examined whether sociocontextual and sociocognitive variables explained the math/science goals of 409 Mexican American youth using a modified version of R. W. Lent, S. D. Brown, and G. Hackett's (1994) social cognitive career theory. Results from structural equation modeling indicated that the hypothesized model explained a significant…

Objective: Interview data collected from 275 clients with severe mental illnesses are used to test the construct and criterion validity of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale (PSS). Method: First, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are used to test whether the scale reflects the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom…

Many times in both educational and social science research it is impossible to collect data that is complete. When administering a survey, for example, people may answer some questions and not others. This missing data causes a problem for researchers using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques for data analyses. Because SEM and…

The current study findings refute the recent claim that marginality theory lacks construct validity. Cultural marginalization is significantly related to depressive symptoms in Korean American, Chinese American, and Japanese American parents and adolescents living in the United States. Correlational analyses indicate that adolescents' depressive…

This multimethod, prospective study examined the nature of pathways between interparental hostility and withdrawal, parental emotional unavailability, and subsequent changes in children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and school adjustment difficulties over a 3-year period in a sample of 210 mothers, fathers, and 6-year-old children.…

Objective: Although many studies have identified associations between childhood maltreatment and later substance use and disordered eating, few have examined causal or explanatory pathways, and whether victim characteristics predict the development of one versus the other of these outcomes remains uninvestigated. Furthermore, relatively little…

The expansion in the number of people entering higher education has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of students enrolling in nontraditional modes, such as part-time study. This study examined the question of whether part-time study curtails the development of the types of intellectual capabilities needed for a knowledge-based…

The authors investigated the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on reading achievement for urban middle school students. The authors initially developed a research-based theoretical model representing interrelationships among students' ethnicity, gender, grade level, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and reading achievement.…

This study applies theorizing from educational psychology and language learning to hypothesize a model of language learning that takes into account affect, motivation, and language learning strategies. The study employed a questionnaire to assess variables of motivation, self-efficacy, anxiety, and language learning strategies. The sample…

By means of more than a dozen user friendly packages, structural equation models (SEMs) are widely used in behavioral, education, social, and psychological research. As the underlying theory and methods in these packages are vulnerable to outliers and distributions with longer-than-normal tails, a fundamental problem in the field is the…

Objective: To explore the relationships of family and cognitive factors to aggression as reported by parents and teachers. Method: Data regarding different types of aggressive behavior were collected from parents and teachers of 165 school-age (7-11 years old) children referred to a study of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and disruptive…

A set of methods is proposed for the analysis of opportunity to learn (OTL) in relation to achievement in large-scale educational assessments. The focus is on how to assess the effect of OTL on performance while taking prior performance and other background factors into account. The methods are illustrated with mathematics data from the National…

Several goodness of fit (GOF) criteria have been developed to assist the researcher in interpreting structural equation models. However, the determination of GOF for structural equation models is not as straightforward as that for other statistical approaches in multivariate procedures. The four GOF criteria used across the commonly used…

Used structural equational modeling to examine the combined influence and predictive ability of family characteristics on maternal and paternal involvement in early intervention programs. Found that coping was a significant predictor of maternal and paternal involvement as well as a mediator variable between family functioning and parental…

Describes a new approach for analyzing an individual's responses made at multiple times. Proposes that three sources of variance determine a person's current standing on a variable: trait (term does not change), state (term changes), and error (random term). Shows how structural equation modeling can be used and presents an extended example. (RJM)