No abstract

Many students in the United States, particularly those from lower income or racially/ethnically diverse families, are exposed to clusters of risk factors that have a negative impact on school success. This study examined the association between the number of supportive and caring adults in the home, school, and neighborhood and the school engagement of students in early adolescence. Results revealed that students who reported such supportive adults in their lives also reported higher levels of psychological and behavioral engagement with their schooling. Additionally, including measures of environmental risk factors in analytical models of the school engagement of middle school students reduced otherwise statistically significant race/ethnicity differences to nonsignificance. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

Three developmental contexts-school, neighborhood, and family-influence school outcomes. The focus of the current investigation was on the promotive role of 4 family factors-family satisfaction, family support, family integration, and home academic culture-on 3 school outcomes. These outcomes included student self-reported sense of school coherence, avoidance of problem behavior, and academic performance. Utilizing a hierarchical linear modeling strategy and a national probability sample, the family protective factors of interest displayed a significant but differential pattern of impact on the 3 school outcomes studied. Findings related to neighborhood and school factors, as well as race/ethnicity, are also reported and discussed. The implications of these findings with respect to practice and policy are addressed.

OBJECTIVE: In the context of the importance of valid self-report measures to research and evidence-based practice in social work, an argument-based approach to validity is presented and the concept of developmental validity introduced. Cognitive development theories are applied to the self-report process of children and cognitive pretesting is reviewed as a methodology to advance the validity of self-report instruments for children. An application of cognitive pretesting is presented in the development of the Elementary School Success Profile. METHOD: Two phases of cognitive pretesting were completed to gather data about how children read, interpret and answer self-report items. RESULTS: Cognitive pretesting procedures identified validity problems with numerous items leading to modifications. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive pretesting framed by an argument-based approach to validity holds significant potential to improve the developmental validity of child self-report instruments.