Background: Although research suggests that witnessed violence is linked to adverse mental health outcomes among adolescents, little is known about its prevalence or its significance in predicting psychiatric symptoms beyond the contribution of co-occurring risk factors. The purpose of this study was to identify the national prevalence of…

The life course perspective emphasizes that past economic experiences and stage in the life course influence a family's ability to cope with negative life events such as poor health. However, traditional analytic approaches are not well-suited to examine how the impact of negative life events differs based on a family's past economic experiences,…

More than 40% of college drinkers are classified as high risk, and of these about 20% will continue this behavior into adulthood. This exploratory study compared the characteristics of high risk college drinkers who matured out with those who remained adult persistent. Respondents (4,428 alumni) completed a survey about college and current…

To investigate the role of body size in social networks, this study estimated cross-nested multilevel network models (p2) with longitudinal data from the 16 saturated schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As body mass index increased, the likelihood of being nominated by schoolmates as friends--but not the likelihood of…

Many students in New Zealand are now of mature age, female, and mothers of dependent children (Allister et al. 2006). These students typically experience the challenge of sharing themselves between their children, partners, extended families and their fellow students, lecturers and studying. This research explored how a group of student-teachers…

Left-behind children refer to those left behind by parents working away from home and taken care of by only one of the parents or relatives because one or both of the parents go out to work in the city. By using questionnaires, this study involves 8,627 rural pupils chosen from 10 provinces to examine academic psychological characteristics,…

Research consistently shows that children exposed to interparental conflict are at-risk for experiencing psychopathology. Establishing a link, however, between interparental conflict and maladjustment is not the same as understanding "how" specific outcomes manifest. Therefore, we examined the relation of interparental conflict and appraisal with…

Background: This study took place in the context of recent legislation enacted in several countries--including France--and aimed at promoting inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities. It focuses on young children with autism and examines the links between the children's characteristics and their weekly hours of regular-classroom…

Although there is growing consensus that parental stress is a risk factor in child development, longitudinal studies of its effects are few. This study tested a sample of 231 mother-child dyads in terms of whether the relations between the global experience of stress in mothers (perceived stress scale) and child temperamental characteristics…

Several studies have demonstrated that children's gender and parental education exert a significant, but not equal, effect on toddler language development at different ages. This study determined the effect of children's gender and parental education on the verbal competence of toddlers between 16 and 30 months. The sample included 953 Slovenian…

Data from a community-based longitudinal study were used to investigate the associations of parental psychiatric disorders evident by early adulthood with child-rearing behavior during middle adulthood. A series of psychiatric assessments was conducted during the adolescence (mean ages 14 and 16) and early adulthood (mean age 22) of 153 males and…

Consistent with the view that adolescent relationships are established in the context of important characteristics of their social networks, we examined the effects of adolescents' experiences of parenting (psychological control and positive monitoring) and of peer aggression and victimization, on their self reports of dating victimization and…

Relations between marital aggression (psychological and physical) and children's health were examined. Children's emotional insecurity was assessed as a mediator of these relations, with distinctions made between marital aggression against mothers and fathers and ethnicity (African American or European American), socioeconomic status, and child…

Objective: To identify beliefs about eating 2.5 cups of vegetables and to assess how well these beliefs predict intention to eat them. Design: A survey based on the Theory of Planned Behavior. Setting: Two public high schools in 2 counties in eastern North Carolina. Participants: 157 ninth-grade students (mean age = 14.71 years [SD = 0.82]).…

Research has identified associations between indicators of social disadvantage and the presence of child sleep problems. We examined the longitudinal development of infant sleep in families experiencing high (n = 58) or low (n = 64) levels of psychosocial adversity, and the contributions of neonatal self-regulatory capacities and maternal settling…