Previously, we adapted the Home Situations Questionnaire to measure behavioral non-compliance in everyday settings in children with pervasive developmental disorders. In this study, we further revised this instrument for use in autism spectrum disorder and examined its psychometric properties (referred to as the Home Situations…

This paper investigates the association between changes in coresident sibship size and children's educational progress in the Philippines. When conceptualized at the household level, sibship size is a dynamic aspect of the family context with potentially important implications for resources needed to support a child's education. Individual-level…

Stress can affect anyone, and gifted children are no exception. Giftedness can sometimes be the cause of the stress. Perfectionism, sensitivity, and intensity are characteristics of gifted children that may exacerbate stress. Stress can be constructive. Prolonged stress, however, with no time to recover becomes detrimental. Continued stress upsets…

As an extension of the effort devoted to updating the questionnaires for TIMSS and PIRLS 2011, this dissertation explored a new reporting strategy for contextual questionnaire data. The study investigated the feasibility of constructing "global indicators" from a large number of diverse background variables, which could provide policy…

A recent ground-breaking study from the University of Nevada (Evans et al., 2010) found that the number of books in the home has as great an impact on children's attainment as parental education levels. The 20 year study by Evans and her colleagues found that having as few as 20 books in the home still has a significant impact on propelling a…

This study builds on and informs ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) by focusing on the contextual processes by which individual developmental trajectories can be altered. Ecological theory posits that children are embedded in a nested and interactive set of interrelated contexts beginning with the micro-system (the most…

The literature on autism describes many different types of therapy techniques and teaching strategies. Most are interventions that help a child with autism move from one developmental level to the next and learn to manage his or her behavior. Although important, such strategies and therapies do not examine how a family's cultural practices may…

Mental health clinicians who work with families with infants and toddlers often face complex challenges that require collaboration among many professionals and disciplines. A team approach to addressing infant mental health is critical to successful intervention. In this articles, a fractured family dealing with interpersonal violence and maternal…

The paper tells of the social constructs surrounding young children with learning difficulties in their home, "special" early education setting and "inclusive" or mainstream early education setting in England. The exploratory study focused on how three- to four-year-old children made sense of their environments and how their…

Through ethnographic research using grounded theory we examined social, cultural and locational factors which result in low post-compulsory retention rates of remote island students. The research, conducted by an island "insider," followed a cohort of Australian students from Year 10 in a small island school off the coast of Tasmania to Year 11 in…

Purpose: Within the framework of an ongoing cluster-randomized effectiveness trial of a parental prevention program, the aim of the present study is to investigate attitudes towards under-age drinking and use of program components, i.e. alcohol-specific parenting behaviors, in parents who did and did not take part in the programme.…

Based on the prevalent son preference in China, this paper proposes a new measure of relative bargaining power within the household. Using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey, we show that a woman with a first-born son has a 3.9 percentage points' greater role in household decision-making than a woman with a first-born daughter. Having a…

In their overview for the prekindergarten-grade 2 Standards, the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) documents the value of early mathematical environments. During these early years, young children are building beliefs about what mathematics is and learning about themselves as early mathematicians. What young children learn about…

Two groups of Mandarin-English bilingual children (3-5-year-olds, 6-8-year-olds) participated in a picture identification task and a picture naming task in both languages. Results revealed age-related growth in English, but not Mandarin vocabulary. Composite vocabulary was larger than either single-language vocabulary in the younger children but…

This study examined the moderating effects of family conflict and gender on the relationship between community violence and psychosocial development at age 18. The study sample consisted of 728 children and families who were part of the Infant Health and Development Program study of low-birth-weight, pre-term infants. In this sample, adolescent…