Participants 569 parents completed baseline surveys at work, gave permission for confidential surveys to be posted to their adolescent children, and were randomised to intervention or control groups. Parents and adolescents completed follow-up surveys at one week, three months, and nine months after the programme. InterventionTalking Parents, Healthy Teens consists of eight weekly one hour sessions at worksites for parents of adolescent children in 6th-10th grade (about ages 11-16 years). Main outcome measures Parent-adolescent communication about a list of sexual topics; whether parent taught adolescent how to use a condom; ability to communicate with parent/adolescent about sex; openness of parent-adolescent communication about sex. Results Differences between intervention and control groups were significant for the mean number of new sexual topics that parents and adolescents reported discussing between baseline and each follow-up (P<0.001 for each); intervention parents were less likely than controls to discuss no new topics (8% v 29%, 95% confidence interval for difference 16% to 24%) and more likely to discuss seven or more new topics (38% v 8%, 19% to 41%) at nine months. Some differences increased after completion of the programme: at one week after the programme, 18% of adolescents in the intervention group and 3% in the control group (6% to 30%) said that their parents had reviewed how to use a condom since baseline (P<0.001); this grew to 29% v 5% (13% to 36%) at nine months (P<0.001). Compared with controls at nine months, parents and adolescents in the intervention group reported greater ability to communicate with each other about sex (P<0.001) and more openness in communication about sex (P<0.001). Conclusions A worksite based programme can have substantial effects on communication between parents and adolescents about sexual health. Trial registration Clinical Trials NCT00465010.

In order to test the influence of therapist's ethnicity and language on the course of treatment for children and adolescents, this study investigated the effect of language and ethnic therapist–client match on the mental health treatment of thousands of Asian‐American, Mexican‐American, African‐American, and Caucasian‐American children and adolescents in the Los Angeles County Mental Health System. Conclusive support for the cultural responsiveness hypothesis for children was not found, but some validity for the hypothesis among adolescents was found. Ethnic match was a significant predictor of Mexican and Asian adolescent dropout after one session and total number of sessions, as well as African adolescent dropout after one session. When language match was added to the model for Mexican adolescents, language match was a significant predictor of dropout after one session and total number of sessions, whereas ethnic match was no longer a significant predictor. However, when language match was added to the model for Asian adolescents, language match was not a significant predictor of dropout after one session or total number of sessions, whereas ethnic match remained a significant predictor for both variables. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Do cultural values and traditions influence the development of coping styles ? To address this question, we compared self-reports of coping by 6-14-year-olds in Thailand and the U.S. One hundred and forty-one children were interviewed about six common stressors: separation from a friend, injection in a doctor's office, adult anger, peer animosity, school failure, and physical injury. Children's self-reported coping methods were coded as overt or covert. Coping goals were coded as reflecting primary control (attempts to influence objective conditions), secondary control (attempts to adjust oneself to objective conditions), or relinquished control. Although findings revealed numerous cross-national similarities, there were also multiple main and interaction effects involving culture, suggesting that sociocultural context may be critical to our understanding of child coping. Consistent with literature on Thai culture, Thai children reported more than twice as much covert coping as American children for stressors involving adult authority figures (i.e. adult anger, injection in doctor's office). Thai children also reported more secondary control goals than Americans when coping with separation, but American children were five times as likely as Thais to adopt secondary control goals for coping with injury. The findings support a model of coping development in which culture and stressor characteristics interact, with societal differences most likely to be found in situations where culture-specific norms become salient.

Previous literature describes Thai children as unusually polite, deferent, and behaviorally restrained. Yet, in a recent study employing teacher reports, Thai children were reported to show many more behavior problems than American children. Such a finding may reflect culture-linked differences in the perspective of Thai versus American teachers. To explore this possibility, we used trained observers to conduct direct observations of Thai and American children's school behavior, and we obtained teacher reports on the same children. Observational results were precisely the opposite of previous and present teacher-report findings: Observers reported twice as much problem behavior and off-task behavior in American children as in their Thai age-mates. This pattern may reflect Thai-U.S. differences in teachers' style, societal values and practices, even child temperament. The finding support the value of direct behavior observation in cross-national research on child problems.

On a exploré dans trois recherches la relation entre la satisfaction professionnelle et les mentalités individualiste ou communautaire. Dans la première, une étude de niveau écologique, nous avons trouvé des corrélations à la limite de seuil de signification entre l'indice d'individualisme de Hofstede et des attitudes défavorables envers la communication et les relations professionnelles; toutes deux relèvent des aspects inter‐individuels du travail. Pour la deuxième recherche, c'est un échantillon d'employés chinois de Hong Kong qui ont fourni les données. Les employés présentant un sentiment communautaire se montraient plus satisfaits de leur travail, de leur salaire, de leur promotion, de leur encadrement et de leurs collègues que leurs homologues individualistes. La troisième étude a retrouvé les résultats de la deuxième avec un échantillon d'employés d'un niveau plus modeste. The relationship between individualism‐collectivism and job satisfaction was explored in three studies. In the first, ecological‐level, study, we found marginally significant correlations between Hofstede's individualism index and unfavourable attitudes towards working relationships and communication, both being interpersonal aspects of work. In the second study, data were collected from a sample of Chinese employees in Hong Kong. Collectivist employees reported higher satisfaction with their work, pay, promotion, supervision, and coworker than their individualist counterparts. Study 3 replicated findings of Study 2, with a sample of employees at a lower rank.