While the relationship between stressful life events, social support, and health outcomes has received much attention, efforts to quantify social support and directly examine specific ameliorative effects have resulted in mixed findings. Direct and mediational effects of two psychometrically validated measures of perceived and received social…

A study was conducted at Kirkwood Community College (KCC) to assess the role played by students' selection of a major as a predictor of academic success as measured by graduation from a two-year college. The study utilized computerized records and transcripts of students enrolled at KCC during fall 1974 through fall 1980. The records of a sample…

An investigation explored whether preadolescent children have developed self-schemata which serve in making judgments about trait behavior for both self and others. Seventeen males and 23 females between the ages of 10 and 11 who attended a public elementary school on Long Island were interviewed. Children rated themselves relative to classmates…

Adolescence may be conceptualized as a period of life that begins and ends with major developmental transitions: the transition from childhood to adolescence and the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. This study focused on the nature of change in early adolescence and the relationship of that change to adjustment or problem behavior 4…

The problem of meeting the demands of a rapidy expanding educational system is a common one to many developing nations. A major component of the problem lies in the fact that many of the teachers presently in the schools lack the necessary educational background that would permit them to enroll in advanced level programs in order to upgrade their…

This paper discusses the role of perceived self-efficacy during self-regulated learning, the process whereby students' cognitions manifest themselves in behaviors systematically oriented toward the attainment of academic learning goals. The conceptual focus derives from A. Bandura's social cognitive learning theory. A model of cognitive skill…

This study was conducted to investigate in a controlled multivariate fashion the effects of participation and involvement in extracurricular activities on adolescent self-esteem and to analyze for possible sex differences in these relationships. Middle-class high school students (N=445) completed measures of self-esteem, degree of participation in…

While minor physical anomalies (MPAs), a set of 17 non-obvious but measurable characteristics of the hands, face and feet, have been linked to a number of behavioral syndromes in children, such personality correlates of MPAs in adults have not been studied. To explore the relationshp between MPAs and temperament in a college sample, 114 students…

This paper considers the effects of fertility on the labor supply of Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican women in the United States. Drawing on the notion of "role incompatibility"--the degree to which the joint provision of child care and work are in conflict--the study examines whether having characteristics that increase the likelihood…

A study identified the variables affecting the vocational choice of college women. During the research project, a 97-item instrument entitled the Work Interest Questionnaire (WIQ) was developed and administered to 437 undergraduate female students enrolled at a large Midwestern university. The subjects were selected based on their varying fields…

This workshop report presents excerpts of the panel discussions of 10 distinguished family researchers considering the feasibility of joint studies across the three Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration Institutes (the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National…

To investigate the factors determining why some children succeed at certain intellectual tasks while others of equal or near equal IQ, age, and motivation are unable to master the same task, 145 female and 144 male eighth grade students were administered "An Inventory of Piaget's Developmental Tasks" (IPDT). Labeled as concrete,…

Recent national surveys have found marked increases in the use of illicit drugs and alcohol among adolescents. To investigate differential prediction of alcohol versus hard drug use amoung youths, 6% of the youths, aged 10-19, from a Pennsylvania county school system (N=1,689) were assessed on the HEW Community Youth Program Impact Scales. The 12…

This investigation documents the impact of the Van Leer Study, a large-scale evaluation study of achievement in the primary schools of Israel. It is intended to increase understanding of the process of evaluation utilization, showing how evaluation findings and other kinds of information can work together, over time and in a variety of ways, to…

While published recommendations for housing design and neighborhood planning for older people continue to proliferate, these standards and criteria are rarely subjected to empirical testing. In this study, objective field assessments, using objective measures of residential quality, measured residential resources for meeting life maintenance and…