Conduct disorder and comorbidity

Conduct Disorder (CD) research is focusing on complex issues introduced by comorbidity because of its widespread existence, thoeretical importance and practical significance. This review provides critical examination of research published during the past ten years addressing CD and its comorbid conditions, specifically Attention‐Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and internalizing disorders. It is concluded that comorbidity varies with age, gender, informant, diagnostic criteria, and nature of the sample (clinical vs. epidemiological). Implications of comorbidity for etiology, diagnosis, treatment, law, and policy and preventive efforts in work with children and adolescents with CD are offered for school psychologists. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Factors in life science textbooks that may deter girls' interest in science

In order to examine factors that may deter girls' interest in science, five seventh-grade life science textbooks were analyzed for sexism in language, images, and curricular content, and for features of activities that have been found to be useful for motivating girls. Although overt sexism was not apparent, subtle forms of sexism in the selection of language, images, and curricular content were found. Activities had some features useful to girls, but other features were seldom included. Teachers may wish to use differences that were found among texts as one basis for text selection.     

Social skills interventions across school settings: Case study reviews of students with mild disabilities

This study investigates the efficacy of a social skills training program with seven mildly handicapped students across three school settings: regular classroom, special education resource room, and recess. It was found that social skills training generated improvement on both pre-post measures and behavior ratings. Improvements were maintained 2 weeks after treatment was discontinued for seven students. All students' performance generalized from resource room to regular classroom settings; only four students' performance generalized to the recess setting.     

Longitudinal Analyses of Classroom Behavior and School Achievement

Third-, sixth-, and ninth-grade teachers in a Wisconsin county nominated 982 children as consistently displaying socially approved behavior and 568 as consistently displaying aggressive-disruptive behavior in the classroom. Five years after the original nominations teacher grades in English, science, mathematics, and social studies; rank in graduating class for original ninth graders; and STEP scores were obtained. Analyses of covariance (ANACOVA) were made with IQ as the covariate and behavior, grade, sex, and home location as the independent variables. The results indicate clearly that the children whose behavior was aggressive and disruptive in the classroom achieved at significantly lower levels than their socially approved peers.     

New Metrics for Employee Development

Organizations are increasingly concerned about human resource accountability and have turned to HR metrics as an economical way to assess results from human resource activities. Unfortunately, many existing development metrics have limited utility. In this article, we review and discuss existing metrics for employee development. Then, we present five new development metrics and that can provide a core set of metrics for any type of organization. These metrics will provide new perspectives that older metrics do not, and lead to better human resource development decisions.     

Predicting Suicide Risks Among Outpatient Adolescents Using the Family Environment Scale: Implications for Practice and Research

This study was designed to identify characteristics of family functioning that relate to suicide potential in an outpatient adolescent population. Participants included 51 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 who were involved in outpatient counselling. The Family Environment Scale and the Suicide Probability Scale were used to assess adolescents’ perception of family social climate and degree of suicide risk respectively. Results revealed significant correlations between suicide risk and family systems characterized by heightened conflict and lower levels of cohesion, independence, and organization. A stepwise multiple regression analysis suggested that organization (related to clarity and structure in family activities and responsibilities) was the strongest predictor of suicide risk. Implications for research and practice are considered.     

Emotional intelligence and academic attainment of British secondary school children: a cross-sectional survey

Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) covers a wide range of self-perceived skills and personality dispositions such as motivation, confidence, optimism, peer relations and coping with stress. In the last few years, there has been a growing awareness that social and emotional factors play an important part in students’ academic success and it has been claimed that those with high scores on a trait EI measure perform better. This research investigated whether scores on a questionnaire measure of trait EI were related to school performance in a sample of British pupils. Results showed that high performing students had higher trait EI scores than low performing students and that some aspects of trait EI (motivation and low impulsivity) as well as total trait EI were significant predictors of academic achievement after controlling for prior attainment at school. Therefore, initiatives to develop the emotional and social abilities of schoolchildren might be worthwhile and more effective than concentrating solely on teaching and curriculum activities.     

Going Deep into Mechanisms for Moral Reasoning Growth: How Deep Learning Approaches Affect Moral Reasoning Development for First-year Students

The purpose of this paper was to determine the effects of deep approaches to learning on the moral reasoning development of 1,457 first-year students across 19 institutions. Results showed a modest positive relationship between our measures of deep approaches to learning and moral reasoning at the end of the first year of college even after controlling for precollege moral reasoning. After accounting for a host of demographic and relevant student characteristics and for the natural clustering of students, we found that the integrative learning subscale, which captures students’ participation in activities designed to integrate information from varied sources and diverse perspectives, positively affected moral reasoning among first-year students. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.