Shows how latent variable growth modeling can be utilized to examine change in students' attitudes toward science over the middle and high school years. Reports that students' attitudes toward science generally decline during the middle and high school years. Defines the factors that affect student attitudes as teacher encouragement, peer…

Examined dating violence in a racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of students (N=939). Results reveal that males were more likely to attack a dating partner when they had witnessed interparental violence; believed that male-female dating violence was justifiable; used alcohol/drugs; or were the recipients of dating violence.…

Examined the effect of family use of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs on teenagers', aged 11-16 years old, later use of these substances. Adult drug use, whether of single substances or several, clearly influenced adolescents to use a variety of substances. Suggests a three-factor model comprising Modeling, Attitude, and Availability to explain the…

Offers suggestions to early childhood educators for encouraging fathers' participation in their children's early education and care. Reviews the history of fathers' participation in care and their role in children's development throughout Erikson's first five stages of growth. Considers reasons for involving fathers in children's growth, including…

Studied nearly 150,000 maternal word-tokens used by low-income mothers in mother-child conversations. Found that 99 percent of maternal lexical input consisted of 3,000 most frequent word. Density of sophisticated words and density with which such words were embedded in helpful/instructive interactions at age 5 predicted over one-third of variance…

Analyzed 5-year-olds' retellings of movie segments following discussions with their mothers. Found that quality of stories was better for children whose mothers used scaffolding strategies (e.g., prompting children's memories, extended exchanges on critical topics used by their mothers) than for children whose mothers used no such strategies or…

A study of 10 preservice teachers in Hong Kong regarding their beliefs about principals found a relationship between leadership/management style of principals they would like to be and mothers' behavior and a relationship between principals they would not like to be and fathers' interpersonal behavior. Results demonstrate the influence of personal…

Presents a model of moral identity formation. Examines the model using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (Child Sample) to assess the influence of family environment on moral identity formation. Reveals that cognitively- and socially-rich family environments and high levels of adolescent-parent joint activity facilitated…

Investigated the links between attachment and parent peer-management practices, and how each is related to children's home-based peer networks, in a sample of preschoolers and their parents. Found that most securely attached girls, but not boys, were more involved in initiating their peer contacts; home-based peer networks were related to parent…

Explores the effects of legislation requiring parental consent for a minor's abortion and the risk of acquiring AIDS on adolescent pregnancy and abortion rates. Finds lower pregnancy and abortion rates for women 15-17 in states with parental involvement legislation, while abortion doubles and pregnancy rates decline with the incidence of AIDS.…

Discusses the role of parents in fostering numeracy in their preschool children. Considers the importance of numeracy and includes suggestions for promoting numeracy among children ages 3-4 and 5-6 years. (JPB)

The nature of linguistic emphasis was studied from audio recordings of 29 mother-child dyads. Nineteen dyads involved mothers interacting with their 4-year-olds who evidenced language impairments. Approximately 84 percent of children evidencing language impairments could be so classified based on the acoustic variables associated with maternal use…

Reports on a study of parent-child interactions in a children's museum demonstrating that parents shape and support children's scientific thinking in everyday, nonobligatory activity. Finds that when children engaged an exhibit with their parents, their exploration of evidence was observed to be longer, broader, and more focused on relevant…

Examined competing explanations for hypothesized family effects on adolescents' educational outcome beliefs. Found no support for deficit theories of family functioning. Findings underscore the importance of taking family processes into account in predicting educational outcome beliefs, and findings regarding measures of connection followed the…

Used national, longitudinal data from two generations to assess explanations for intergenerational transmission of marital instability, one based on relationship skills and the other on marital commitment. Results suggest that offspring with divorced parents have an elevated risk of seeing their own marriages end in divorce because they hold a…