Children and stress: Sources,reactions, and interventions

Stress in childhood is universal, an inevitable part of life. No child reaches adolescence without having to cope with the normal developmental and environmental stresses of weaning, toilet training, entry into school, and the inevitable increasing demands for self-control and responsibility.Diane Shrier is clinical associate professor and director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark.     

Leading them to books—For life

Promoting lifelong reading, learning, and library use is a goal of most youth-serving librarians. The Young Adult Services Department of the Mesa, Arizona, Public Library is finding that more teens are entering adulthood each year as library users and supporters, and they are bringing their children to the library, too. This article shares a YA librarian's perspectives on how to provide successful reader advisory for teens and how to get young adults to read on their own, building the foundation of a lifelong interest in reading, an interest passed from generation to generation. Building this foundation depends on dedicated, well-trained specialists in YA library service, the publication of well-written and attractive books for teens, school and public library administrative support. Diane P. Tuccillo has been head of the Young Adults Services Adult Services Department at the Mesa (Arizona) Public Library since 1980. She has had articles published in a variety of professional journals includingEmergency Librarian, Voice of Young Advocates (VOYA), andThe ALAN Review, and is a regular book reviewer forVOYA, Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide, andSchool Library Journal.     

GENDER BIAS: ANALYSIS OF FACTORS CAUSING MALE UNDERREPRESENTATION IN SURVEYS

Using data from a 1987 telephone survey of over 1,000 Illinoisadult residents, this research looked into factors causing maleunder-representation in surveys using the last-birthday methodof respondent selection. Differences by sex in rates of refusaland non-contact (after respondent selection) were evaluatedfor relative contribution to gender bias. Accuracy of informant'sresponse to the birthday question was gauged by checking againstbirth dates of adults rostered during the interview. Other factors,such as the proportion of informants who do not know the lastbirthday, or who misreport from a desire to be the one interviewed(or not interviewed), were evaluated for relative effect onsample representation of males and females.     

Measuring Thinking Skills Through Classroom Assessment

The classroom assessment procedures o f 36 teachers in grades 2 to 12 were studied in depth to determine the extent to which they measure students" higher order thinking skills in mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts. A wide variety o f assessment documents were analyzed, teachers were observed asking oral questions in their classrooms, and each teacher was interviewed. The results revealed that paper-and-pencil assessment documents were dominated by recall questions across all grade levels. However, inference was assessed also, especially in mathematics. Oral questions tended to tap recall too, with analysis and inference reflected to some extent. Across grades, subjects, and forms o f assessment, comparison and evaluation questions were rare. Although these teachers had been trained to teach thinking skills to some extent, they were less often trained to assess such skills. Those who were trained tended to ask a higher proportion o f thinking skills questions than those who were not. The training implications o f the results are discussed.