Few prospective studies have examined the relationship between social support and psychological distress and depressive symptoms in adolescents. The aims of this study were to test whether social support is protective against psychological distress and depressive symptoms in an ethnically diverse population of adolescents and whether differences…

Objective: This study examined whether the experience of enjoyable mealtimes at home during childhood was related to eating behaviors and subjective diet-related quality of life in adulthood. Methods: The study used data (n = 2,936) obtained from a research program about "Shokuiku" (food and nutrition education) conducted by the Cabinet…

A critical component of teaching social skills to people with autism is the generalization of behavior change across a variety of untrained situations during which social skills are appropriate. The script-fading procedure is an effective technology for teaching social skills to people with autism, but few researchers have established cues in the…

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics' primary mission is to enhance data collection and reporting on children and families. "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2013" provides the Nation with a summary of national indicators of children's well-being and monitors changes in these indicators.…

Policymakers need to decide how to invest in strengthening the most basic foundation for early childhood development: family relationships. The challenges: (1) help parents provide the responsive and stimulating environments that will prepare young children for school; and (2) support fathers' engagement with their children regardless of whether…

Online and on-demand tests are increasingly used in assessment. Although the main focus has been cheating and test security (e.g., Selwyn, 2008) the cross-setting equivalence of scores as a function of contrasting test conditions is also an issue that warrants attention. In this study, the impact of environmental and cognitive distractions, as…

Informal home education occurs without much that is generally considered essential for formal education--including curriculum, learning plans, assessments, age related targets or planned and deliberate teaching. Our research into families conducting this kind of education enables us to consider learning away from such imposed structures and to…

This paper addresses the phenomenon of Language Maintenance and Language Shift through a qualitative study of Tamil language in the family domain in Singapore. The influence of Singapore's bilingual policy and the institutional support offered for maintenance of Tamil language provide the context in which the central research problem of the status…

The purpose of this study was to expand the theory of self-efficacy in relation to feminist perspectives by exploring the factors and the dynamics that foster a low sense of professional self-efficacy in Israeli female teachers. Listening to their voices enables us to learn about their past experiences in the nuclear family and consider their…

Background. The family and home environment is an influential antecedent of childhood obesity. The purpose of this study was to pilot test The Enabling Mothers to Prevent Pediatric Obesity through Web-Based Education and Reciprocal Determinism (EMPOWER) intervention; a newly developed, theory-based, online program for prevention of childhood…

This study, conducted in June 2014 in Kampala, Uganda, is a follow-up to a similar study conducted in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2008. The basic research question addressed is: "What are the experiences in the lives of upper elementary-aged Ugandan children that foster an intrinsic motivation to seek information?" A secondary…

We study household and context determinants of school dropout using data for 130,000 children in 363 regions of 30 developing countries using multi-level discrete-time event-history analysis. Most (72%) of the variation in school dropout is due to household-level factors, with socioeconomic resources (parental education, father's occupation, and…

Purpose: This paper aims to outline the misguided underpinnings of the "word gap" concept promoted by Hart and Risley (1995). This concept posits that a "30 million word gap" between children of poverty and those from affluent households accounts for widespread academic disparities. Based on this premise, there has been a…

In contemporary America, racial gaps in achievement are primarily due to gaps in skills. Skill gaps emerge early before children enter school. Families are major producers of those skills. Inequality in performance in school is strongly linked to inequality in family environments. Schools do little to reduce or enlarge the gaps in skills that are…

The author presents insights from various readers of "ExchangeEveryDay" regarding trends in the world of family child care. Kathleen Reticker of Acre Family Child Care in Lowell, Massachusetts thinks an increasing trend in Family Child Care is the pressure to emulate a Center, instead of seeing family child care as a different model. Over the…