Examined relations among measures of child language derived from observations of 20-month-olds' speech with mothers, experimenter assessments, and maternal reports. Found that structural equation modeling supported strong relations among the three sources, the loading of multiple measures on a single latent construct of vocabulary competence, and…

Surveys of the attitudes and intentions of 155 Australian agricultural students at the beginning and end of their freshman year in college were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that constructs in the model--self-efficacy, future orientation, and generic skills self-estimates--were key predictors of student persistence and…

The influence of neighborhoods on adolescent behaviors has received increasing research attention. In the present study, we use structural equation models to specify pathways from neighborhoods to adolescent cigarette and alcohol use through parental closeness, parental monitoring, parent substance use, and peer substance use. We use a national…

This study examined the differential impacts of SAT scores and high school rank, college academic level, motivational variables, and self-regulatory variables in explaining variance in the academic achievement of male and female collegians using structural equation modeling and multiple groups analyses. Significantly, in light of earlier research,…

Students today are different from their counterparts of three and four decades ago. Women have outnumbered men for more than 15 years, and the participation rates for members of historically underrepresented groups have made impressive gains. Many of these "new" students are the first in their families to attend college. It is important that these…

The authors evaluate the validity of the Social Provisions Scale for physical activity among adolescent Black (n = 896) and White (n = 823) girls. The girls completed the scale and measures of subjective norms and physical activity in the eighth and ninth grades. Within the sample of White girls, the Social Provisions Scale contained 24 items that…

The past decade has seen a tremendous growth in the use of structural equation modeling (SEM) to address research questions in 2 subfields of behavioral science: cancer prevention and control (e.g., determinants of cancer screening adherence) and behavioral oncology (e.g., determinants of psychosocial adjustment among cancer patients or…

The objectification of women by our society can become internalized by women, resulting in negative psychological outcomes. Using Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) objectification theory, we tested a model of the relationships between self-objectification and disordered eating and depressive symptoms in a sample of undergraduate women (n = 384). One…

We tested Becker's (1960) side-bet conceptualization of commitment within the context of Meyer and Allen's (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment. Employees (N=202) from various organizations completed a survey including measures of (a) seven categories of side bets (b) affective, normative, and continuance commitment, and (c)…

According to social norms theory, when high school students overestimate the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) by their peers, they tend to use more themselves. The purpose of this study was to determine whether these over estimations (misperceptions) could be corrected through a similar age peer-to-peer interactive social norms…

This study investigated the psychometric properties of the Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Scale (LSDS) in a sample of African-American and Hispanic-American children. Participants were a non-clinical sample (N = 186) of children ages 11 to 13 in the fifth and sixth grades in a school in the Metropolitan New York area. Confirmatory factor…

The authors investigated the relationship between self-perceptions of ability and achievement in math, science, and English from Grades 8 to 11 (N = 342). A state-trait model that included an association between stable (i.e., trait-like) components of self-perceptions and achievement as well as time-specific (i.e., state-like) effects during the…

Purpose: This study examined the generalizability of a previously validated model concerning how student perceptions of school culture affect student achievement. Design/methodology/approach: Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data were collected from 1,026 eighth-grade students in secondary schools on the island of Cyprus.…

This study examines how task characteristics (the number of visual chunks and the amount of planning time) and test-taker characteristics (graph familiarity) influence the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in graph comprehension, the strategies used in describing graphs, and the scores obtained on the graph description task in a…

In this article, a heterogeneous latent growth curve model for modeling heterogeneity of growth rates is proposed. The suggested model is an extension of a conventional growth curve model and a complementary tool to mixed growth modeling. It allows the modeling of heterogeneity of growth rates as a continuous function of latent initial status and…