This study explored variations in the meaning and psychological dimensions of achievement among people of different ages, sexes, and cultures. Subjects were 504 male and female British and Chinese students aged 13-55 in Hong Kong. Repertory grid technique was used to elicit success situations and related constructs. A group grid was then…

Television's impact on children and the positive role of parents in moderating that impact is discussed in terms of: (1) the view that television has a largely negative impact on children; (2) the importance of television literacy; (3) ways in which parents are molding television's impact to their purposes; (4) variation in television's impact…

In 1983, the Institute of Education in Singapore started a nine-year longitudinal project funded by the Bernard van Leer Foundation in Holland to study the cognitive and social development of pre-school children in Singapore. Each phase of the project was to last 3 years. Phase One (July 1983 through June 1986) concentrated on the collection of…

Since 1977, alcohol and drug use among Ontario students has been studied every 2 years. To examine the patterns of alcohol and other drug use among Ontario students in 1983, a randomized sample of 5,835 students, representing grades 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, from four geographical regions, completed an anonymous questionnaire. An analysis of the…

Adult retraining is an important area for educators to understand because there appear to be some changes developing in the delivery of education and training. One change relates to the entry of private enterprise into the training field, such as the computer courses being held by Radio Shack. Other changes concern the population to be educated.…

The changing achievement relationships among students, from elementary through high school, were investigated between their ages relative to their classmates and their ages at entry into first grade. A secondary analysis was performed on the data collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The sample involved Caucasian students…

Predicting that when presented with a general context children and adults would produce different specific inferences, a study examined children's and adults' script representations of a common event and the use of representation in comprehension. In the first phase of the study, 23 fourth grade and 48 college students were asked to generate…

Recently there has been an increasing interest in the development of children's impressions of stories, partially due to the work of theorists who have proposed formal grammars representing structural characteristics of stories. In order to learn more about children's narrative competence, stories they produced were analyzed in three experiments.…

Two studies investigated behavioral problems in childhood. Study 1 longitudinally investigated similarities and differences in enuresis and nailbiting among Japanese and American children. Incidences of enuresis decreased as subjects' age increased. Socio-cultural and family tolerance were related to incidences of nailbiting. In Study 2, changes…

Two experiments investigated the role of children's assessments of their performance on their decisions to seek help and their preferences for different types of assistance. Blocked into low and high verbal skill groups, participants in study 1 were 84 middle-class third- and fifth-grade elementary school students. Subjects performed a multi-trial…

Many studies have examined factors influencing the career aspirations of high school students, but little has been done to explore this issue with primary school students. This study investigated factors that might influence the career aspirations of children across a broad age spectrum. Students (N=150) from grades 2, 5, 8, and 12 completed…

Two studies of concept development and categorization among 1-, 2-, and 3-year-old children suggest that concept formation is a socially guided process involving convergence on an adult model. Convergence in labeling is an early strategy for shaping children's category boundaries, while later, more elaborate linguistic means are used to…

An observational study was conducted to investigate the computer activity of children in a preschool classroom. Thirty-nine 3- to 5-year-old children were observed using a computer over nine weeks during a daily one-hour free play period. Different types of computer programs were available. During one half of the sessions, an adult knowledgeable…

Improved health care and family planning services, reduction in sociogeographic isolation, and increased economic development were found to be responsible for declining fertility rates in a rural Eastern Kentucky county during 1960-1980. Contemporary fertility patterns in an area historically exhibiting one of Appalachia's highest fertility rates…

Approximately 900 employees in the day care centers in one Swedish commune answered a questionnaire measuring child rearing attitudes and personnel's engagement and feelings concerning their work with the children. The child rearing attitudes were described as either "present-focused" or "future-focused." Of particular interest…