A longitudinal study of 290 Canadian females measured factors at ages 3, 6, 9, and 13 that predicted emotional, physical, and sexual maltreatment occurring up to the age of 16. Significant factors predicting maltreatment were early neurological status and difficult temperament, cognitive status, maternal stress, chronic poverty, negative family climate, weak bonding, and family disruption. There was complex interplay between these factors in predicting both maltreatment status and poor mental health at age 17. Sexual abuse retained a significant link with emotional (but not conduct) problems when effects of physical and emotional abuse were controlled for. Adolescents with a combination of prolonged rather than brief sexual abuse combined with other types of abuse, with a background of family disruption and poverty, and child's impaired coping skills (reflecting poorer cognitive capacity and central nervous system problems) were most likely to have markedly impaired emotional functioning at age 17.

Self-esteem is a potentially important measure for screening problems of social adaptation which underlie and predict mental health problems. Measuring change in self-esteem is also an important way of assessing success of therapeutic programmes of various kinds. The usefulness of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) is indicated from a review of various studies in Canada and America. In the present study, a stratified sample of four comprehensive schools in England, and of classes in two sixth form colleges yielded normative data on the Likert-scaled RSES for 665 male and 665 female pupils aged 12 to 19. Among the measures completed was the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES). In each age group females had significantly lower self-esteem than males, and females were more than twice as likely to have "devastated" self-esteem. Some evidence of construct validity is available for both sex groups within age categories, from significant correlations with previously validated measures of mental health problem categories, using scales from the Ontario Child Health Survey.

Conflict between a parent and an adolescent may be indicative of problems of family cohesion, and may predict poorer self-esteem and problems of emotion and behavior. This idea is explored in high school and junior college populations in Alberta, Canada, and in Britain. In all, 1,796 12 to 19-year-olds completed the summary scale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD), which was also completed by a parent. Results were generally similar in both cultures, with many more similarities than differences. On all scale items, adolescents were significantly more critical of their family life than were their parents. The degree of difference between parent and child desc riptions o f family functioning was significantly correlated with the adolescents’ Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale scores, as well as self-completed, standardized measures of problems of emotion and behaviour. Differences between parent and child’s responses to the FAD were better predictors than FAD scores alone.

university of southampton Kanka Mallick manchester metropolitan university An important goal of schooling is to support students' personal well-being, including to enhance their self-esteem (Bagley, 1989b; Bagley, Verma, Mallick, & Young, 1979). Self-esteem and self-concept (used as interchangeable constructs) are linked to scholastic achievement (Byrne, 1990), and, according to Kaplan (1980), inversely to school drop-out, delinquency, premature sexual activity, unwanted pregnancy, and substance abuse. In theory at least, the ethos of Catholic schools (which in many parts of Canada take more than a quarter of all students) should lead to greater integration with supportive social systems

Background. This review of literature on cross‐cultural aspects of perceptual disembedding skills takes as a starting point a commentary on the Spanish work on field dependence‐independence and scholastic achievements (Tinajero & Páramo, 1997). Aims. To place findings from cross‐cultural psychology on field independence in the context of current literature on multicultural education. Methods. A review of literature, and in particular a review of the authors' studies in this field. Results. It appears that because of the wide variation in abilities in perceptual disembedding between cultures, and the malleability of cognitive styles in migrant children, the concept of cognitive style is more usefully deployed as an indicator of process and change in migration and multicultural education than as a description of basic cognitive processes. Those factors which have influenced change in the direction of children's greater perceptual disembedding skills (urbanisation, migration, exposure to computers and computer games) may also be related to some of the factors responsible for the increase in mean levels of intelligence seen in children in the developed world. The paradox of very high mean scores on the Children's Embedded Figures Test found in studies of Japanese and Chinese 9‐ to 11‐year‐olds, in the absence of identifiable factors which could explain why children in group oriented cultures have such marked abilities in perceptual disembedding, is considered. Conclusion. Multicultural educational practices should not be framed on the presumption that particular ethnic groups possess a particular kind of cognitive style. It is the teacher in the multicultural classroom who should have a field independent cognitive style, so that he or she can accommodate different learning styles in classroom tasks.