Volitional nonadherence is thought to be common among patients with chronic health conditions, including pediatric asthma. To date, no data have been published on the extent to which, and reasons why, families purposefully adjust their child's asthma regimen. This study provides descriptive data for parental report of volitional nonadherence in a sample of 101 children (ages 1-17 years) with asthma. Families tended to decrease rather than increase use of controller medication, but were more likely to increase rather than decrease preventive medication. Motivating factors for increasing medications centered around achieving better symptom control, whereas reasons for decreasing medications involved a perception of less need (ie, asthma was better) and desire to reduce treatment burden. Our results suggest it is important to better understand volitional nonadherence so that behavioral interventions aimed at promoting adherence and health outcome can be more effective.

The goal of this chapter is to inform the reader of the unique facets of childhood as they relate to the research and application of positive psychology, provide reference to exemplary work in this area, and identify research needs for the future. Researchers have noted the need, particularly when working with children and adolescents, to examine strengths and positive aspects of development rather than focusing solely on psychopathology and other possible negative outcomes. Positive psychology offers such an approach. This chapter reviews current research in hope, optimism, benefit finding, and quality of life in children and adolescents, highlighting measurement issues and notable interventions for each of these concepts. Developmental considerations, prevention and promotion, and settings for the delivery of positive psychology to children and adolescents are discussed. Despite the development in positive psychology measurement and intervention for children, much more research is needed in this area. Future exploration of the interrelatedness among hope, optimism, growth finding, and other positive psychology variables is needed. There are many youth programs and interventions that have a positive psychology orientation; however, methodologically sound, systematic research planned a priori is needed. Thus, interventions and evaluations of programs to promote hope or optimism in children and adolescents are prime areas for future work.

We used cluster analysis to identify children's coping profiles and to examine self-and parent-reported correlates of coping in a community sample. Participants included 135 children (M age = 11.27, s.d. = .59) recruited from local public elementary and junior high schools and 116 of their parents. Analyses included hierarchical cluster analysis (Ward's method), followed by non-hierarchical (k-means) cluster analysis to confirm the cluster solution. Results yielded four clusters reflecting high, active, low, and indiscriminant patterns of coping strategies. Members of the active coping group self-reported the fewest symptoms of distress and the greatest number of prosocial competencies after controlling for social desirability. No differences emerged for parent-reported psychosocial functioning across coping profiles. Our results suggest that a combination of active coping strategies may be associated with better psychosocial functioning than a combination of active and avoidant coping strategies.

As children's exposure to violence (EV) has become more evident, concern for the implications that violence has on children has risen. Consequently, researchers have explored the relationship between exposure and outcomes, as well as potential mediators and moderators. In this study, we (a) examined EV in a sample of children from the Midwestern United States; (b) replicated previous findings that identify a direct relationship between EV and psychological sequelae; and (c) explored the possibility that loneliness mediates the exposure-outcomes relationship. Children (11-14 years) in our sample were exposed to elevated levels of violence in their neighborhoods. Furthermore, children who were directly victimized demonstrated greater levels of behavioral difficulties than children who were not. Although loneliness was not a significant mediator, our findings have laid the groundwork for future research regarding the influence of peer relationships on EV and outcomes.

2009) by extending implications of the findings to nomenclature about specialties and specialty training, standardizing website information, and truth in advertising about clinical training programs.