This article describes the development and validation of the Family Influence Scale (FIS). The FIS is designed to assess perceptions of how one's family of origin influences career and work choices. The purpose of Study 1 was to identify the domains of family influence. A 57-item scale was completed by a sample of 205 college students. Results…

Although school psychologists are involved in dealing with the problem of pupil absenteeism at both the individual child and whole school level, one of the possible reasons for their involvement, namely the belief that significant absence from school has an effect on attainments, is actually founded on weak evidence. The literature review…

In this article, the author discusses the important roles that students, school staff and teachers play in keeping the school safe particularly from weapons. The author believes that one way that they do this is by working together to reduce the problem of weapons in school. The role of school staff and teachers extends beyond prevention and…

Various research findings, mostly from Anglo-American countries, evidence the medical profession to be strongly familial and further suggest that a medical family background may be associated with study success in medical undergraduates. This study explored the familial aggregation of the medical profession among 1-year cohort samples of medical…

Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from…

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a behavior that is prevalent among children and adolescents. Although NSSI is often associated with borderline personality disorder and depression, it co-occurs with numerous psychiatric symptoms and associated diagnoses. The current article reviews the research addressing psychiatric symptoms that are commonly…

A growing literature supports cognitive therapy (CT) as an efficacious treatment for youth struggling with emotional or behavioral problems. Recently, work in this area has extended the dissemination of CT to school-based settings. The current study has two aims: 1) to examine the development of therapists' knowledge and skills in CT, an…

In June 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games enjoy full free speech protections and that the regulation of violent game sales to minors is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court also referred to psychological research on violent video games as "unpersuasive" and noted that such research contains many methodological flaws.…

The Brigham Young University-Public School Partnership (BYU-PSP) has been serving K-12 public schools in Utah for 29 years. The Partnership includes five school districts, BYU's David O. McKay School of Education, and the seven arts and sciences colleges at BYU that participate in preparing teachers. This article describes the structure of the…

This dissertation study examined the differences between students in general education and in special education in their perceptions of the types of support they need from different sources during the transitions at the beginning and end of high school. Specifically, this study examined the role of social support in students' behavioral and…

School psychologists are often in the position of seeing a situation, a system, or a common strategy for working with students that might be approached from a different perspective. Knowing this themselves is rarely good enough, though; they work in teams and as consultants to teachers and parents who generally work most closely with the students.…

We empirically examined the effect of reading comprehension on passage fluency in English and Spanish in the context of Cummins interdependence hypothesis (1979) and Perfetti's blueprint of the General Components of Reading (1999). Participants were 96 second-grade English learners being taught to read in Spanish and English. Measures in both…

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health's School Connectedness Scale (SCS) has been widely used in psychological, public health, and education research, but has undergone limited psychometric analysis. This study used the responses of 500,800 junior and senior high school students who completed the biennial California Healthy Kids…

There is a reciprocal relationship between medical and educational systems; nearly all medical issues for children have educational ramifications and educational settings are ideal for implementing preventative and ameliorative medical strategies. Systemic models of collaboration between medical and educational systems are necessary but not…

Barbara Keogh is a true Californian. She was born in Glendale, received her education and professional training in California colleges and universities, and has been a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for more than 40 years, where she is now Emerita. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked as a…