Structural equation modeling was used to simultaneously examine maternal psychological distress and social support as mediators linking maternal childhood trauma (MCT) to both maternal and child-reported behavior at 9 years of age in 231 birth mother-child dyads, who were primarily poor, urban, and African American. One half of the mothers…

Understanding urban teachers' beliefs about African American students has become important because (a) many teachers are reluctant to teach students from other cultures, and (b) most teachers are European American. To construct a psychometrically sound measure of teacher beliefs, the authors investigate the measurement properties of a teacher…

Many U.S. higher education institutions are reaffirming their commitments to public purposes--preparing graduates for civic engagement for the public good and producing knowledge with real-world applications. Developing students for civic engagement for justice in the context of a diverse and inequitable democracy is a complex task. In Article 1,…

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence electronic collaboration technology acceptance and predicted usage for virtual team collaboration projects in higher education courses. The research combined the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT) with a virtual team-training model. All 108 participants…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among learning motivation, engagement behaviors, and performance of undergraduate students. 178 junior students are surveyed from five colleges at a four-year research university in Taiwan. The scales of motivation, engagement, and perceived learning outcomes are adapted from the…

This study developed and tested a new model of the cognitive processes associated with occupational/career indecision for gifted adolescents. A survey instrument with rigorous psychometric properties, developed from a number of existing instruments, was administered to a sample of 687 adolescents attending three academically selective high schools…

Students' motivation is known to be influenced by both internally referenced and externally referenced factors. Internally referenced factors include self-processes (sense of competence and affect), whereas externally referenced factors include significant others (parents, peers and teachers). Using the Facilitating Conditions Questionnaire, the…

This research explores communicative influences on cognitive learning and educational affect in online and offline courses limited to only enrolled students. A survey was conducted of students (N = 147) enrolled in online and offline courses within a single department during Summer, 2013. Respondents were asked about their classroom communication…

Report cards are the primary way that teachers, students, and parents communicate about student achievement in the classroom. Although many school districts develop rubrics to guide teacher grading practices, most research finds that in reality, grades represent a hodgepodge of factors that vary across teachers and across school systems. The…

A growing body of literature has provided evidence of the contribution of various metalinguistic skills to children's English literacy development; however, most of the studies focused on reading outcomes while spelling outcomes have been under-researched. Further, very few studies have been conducted to investigate if the results based on native…

In recent years the number of PhDs in Italy has significantly grown and purposes of PhD courses have expanded from the traditional ones. The analysis of the contribution of PhD title for job placement and employment condition of PhDs is an important tool for evaluating the quality and the effectiveness of PhD courses. For this reason, knowledge of…

This study evaluated the efficacy of "Above the Influence" (ATI), a national media-based health persuasion campaign to deter youth drug use. The campaign uses public service anti-drug prevention messages and targets youth between the ages of 14 and 16, a period of heightened susceptibility to peer influences. The evaluation utilized mall…

This study examined the construct validity of nonverbal social aggression and the relation of nonverbal social aggression to dimensions of children's social status. Peer nominations of verbal social, nonverbal social, direct veral, and physical aggression, as well as social dominance, perceived popularity, and social acceptance, were collected…

This article addresses questions regarding the origins of individual variations in political trust. Using 2 prospective longitudinal studies, we examine the associations between family background, general cognitive ability (g) and school motivation at early age, educational and occupational attainment in adulthood, and political trust measured in…

In the structural equation modeling literature, the normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood (ML) method is most widely used, partly because the resulting estimator is claimed to be asymptotically unbiased and most efficient. However, this may not hold when data deviate from normal distribution. Outlying cases or nonnormally distributed data,…