Mutual antipathies and their significance in middle childhood and adolescence

Mutual antipathies (when two children or adolescents dislike one another) were studied among 2,348 school-age children and 2,768 adolescents to determine incidence, gender and age differences, and implications for social adjustment. The children were more frequently involved than were the adolescents in same-sex antipathies but not mixed-sex ones. Boys were involved more frequently than were girls in same-sex antipathies, but involvement in mixed-sex antipathies was comparable for the two genders. With peer rejection scores used as a covariate, same-sex antipathies were associated with antisocial behavior and social withdrawal among children and adolescents of both genders and, in addition, to emotionality and lack of friendship support among adolescents. Mixed-sex antipathies were related to social adjustment depending on gender: these antipathies were related to antisocial and bullying behavior in boys but not girls; and to nonaggressiveness, victimization, lesser cooperation, shyness, and depression in girls but not boys. Mutual antipathies thus appear to be concomitants of adaptational risk in both childhood and adolescence.     

The nature of reading difficulties among inmates in juvenile institutions

Dyslexia is assumed to be frequent amonginmates in prisons and in juvenileinstitutions. However, it remains unclearwhether the literacy difficulties observed arereally dyslexic in nature. Seventy inmates injuvenile institutions were studied. In additionto literacy skills, the assessment includedphonological skills, school attendance,cultural background, and self-esteem. Dyslexiain the sense of decoding problems related tophonological deficiencies was observed in 11%of the cases. Most of the inmates withliteracy difficulties had a background, frominfancy and onwards, characterized by severesocial and emotional problems, interfering withpositive experience of literacy and theliterate culture. However, these sub-optimalexperiences of the literate culture do notimply dyslexia. From this perspective, it isunlikely that dyslexia is a determining factorof delinquent behavior.     

Handling Missing Data in the Modeling of Intensive Longitudinal Data

Myriad approaches for handling missing data exist in the literature. However, few studies have investigated the tenability and utility of these approaches when used with intensive longitudinal data. In this study, we compare and illustrate two multiple imputation (MI) approaches for coping with missingness in fitting multivariate time-series models under different missing data mechanisms. They include a full MI approach, in which all dependent variables and covariates are imputed simultaneously, and a partial MI approach, in which missing covariates are imputed with MI, whereas missingness in the dependent variables is handled via full information maximum likelihood estimation. We found that under correctly specified models, partial MI produces the best overall estimation results. We discuss the strengths and limitations of the two MI approaches, and demonstrate their use with an empirical data set in which children’s influences on parental conflicts are modeled as covariates over the course of 15 days (Schermerhorn, Chow, & Cummings, 2010).     

School Leaving: A Longitudinal Perspective Including Neighborhood Effects

Using 1970 and 1980 census data from 202 tracts in the Chicago metropolitan region, we examine whether neighborhoods influence the likelihood of high school graduation for a cohort of African-American children followed from 1966 to 1993. Neighborhood-level variables included percent living below poverty and percent in white-collar occupations. We test for the possible direct, indirect, and interactive effects of these neighborhood indicators on the likelihood of school dropout. Our examination found the advantage of living in a neighborhood characterized by a high percentage of residents who work in white-collar occupations. Male adolescents who lived in a middle-class neighborhood were more likely to graduate from high school, even with family background, early school performance, adolescent family supervision, and adolescent marijuana use controlled. These findings are consistent with findings from three other studies. However, living in a poverty census tract did not seem to influence the likelihood of high school graduation or school leaving over and above the impact of family and individual characteristics. There also were no neighborhood effects for females.     

Developmental Universals in Childhood Socialization

This paper examines the nature of social and cognitive development and argues that while cognitive processes are clearly implicated in social development there is also evidence that social relationships affect problem-solving and “intelligent behaviour”. It is further argued that 4 foci: social responsiveness, social-relationships, social reasoning and social regulation — considered as development universals ought to be the focus of research. These “four R's” will need to be researched in different cultures. It is likely that while there may some universality, for instance in the age at which responsiveness and interaction with other children change, societies may nevertheless differ in what are thought to be desirable directions in the development of social responsiveness.     

The Company They Keep: Friendships and Their Developmental Significance

Considerable evidence tells us that "being liked" and "being disliked" are related to social competence, but evidence concerning friendships and their developmental significance is relatively weak. The argument is advanced that the developmental implications of these relationships cannot be specified without distinguishing between having friends, the identity of one's friends, and friendship quality . Most commonly, children are differentiated from one another in diagnosis and research only according to whether or not they have friends. The evidence shows that friends provide one another with cognitive and social scaffolding that differs from what nonfriends provide, and having friends supports good outcomes across normative transitions. But predicting developmental outcome also requires knowing about the behavioral characteristics and attitudes of children's friends as well as qualitative features of these relationships.     

The effect of intrauterine PCB exposure on visual recognition memory

Adverse neonatal outcomes have been associated with intrauterine exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In a follow-up study of exposed and nonexposed infants, 123 infants tested at birth were administered Fagan's test of visual recognition memory at 7 months. 2 measures of prenatal PCB exposure, cord serum PCB level and maternal report of contaminated fish consumption, both predicted less preference for a novel stimulus. Preference for novelty decreased in a dose-dependent fashion with increasing levels of prenatal PCB exposure. Postnatal exposure from nursing was not related to visual recognition memory. The relation between prenatal exposure and visual recognition was not mediated by the neonatal deficits, suggesting that intrauterine PCB exposure may have a delayed effect on central nervous system (CNS) functioning.     

Barriers and Perceptions of Natural Resource Careers by Minority Students

Using a framework based on social cognitive career theory, we conducted 38 interviews and four focus groups with college students to identify motivations and barriers faced by underrepresented groups to natural resource careers. Interviews revealed career satisfaction as the most important goal for both natural resource and a comparison of liberal arts students. School difficulty and outsider perceptions were barriers for both groups. Natural resource students faced family pressure to pursue other careers. Focus groups with natural resource students using Q methodology revealed participation in outdoor recreation, exposure to nature-related media, and witnessing environmental degradation as important influences. Barriers included perceptions of ethnic/racial discrimination, financial pressures, and lack of confidence. Results may help academia and agencies better address motivations and barriers to natural resource careers.     

Cross‐national Comparisons in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP): The USA,Norway and China

This article provides a cross‐national perspective on successful school principalship in three countries derived from an analysis of case studies in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). The ISSPP aims to investigate the characteristics, processes and effects of successful school leadership across eight countries (i.e. Australia, Canada, England, the United States, China, Denmark, Sweden and Norway). Examples from the USA, Norway and China (Shanghai) were selected to illustrate cross‐national differences related to the societal purposes of education, the structure and funding of different national educational systems and the influence of particular governmental educational policies (i.e. accountability‐oriented policies) on the leadership practices of individual school principals. Variations in selection criteria and research procedures were also noted. Recommendations for further research using a cultural framework include analysing multiethnic schools to identify culturally specific leadership practices as well as developing further ISSPP case studies in non‐Western contexts.