Ability mindsets influence the quality of mothers' involvement in children's learning: An experimental investigation.

This research examined the role of mothers' mindsets about the malleability of children's ability in the quality of their involvement in children's learning. Mothers (N = 79) of early elementary school children (mean age = 7.65 years) were induced to hold either an entity mindset, in which children's ability is seen as unchangeable, or an incremental mindset, in which children's ability is seen as changeable. Mothers and children were then observed as they worked on a set of challenging problems for 15 min. Unconstructive involvement (i.e., performance-oriented teaching, control, and negative affect) was more frequent among mothers induced to hold an entity mindset than those induced to hold an incremental mindset. Mothers with an entity (vs. incremental) mindset also responded to children's helplessness more unconstructively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inner-city African American parental involvement in elementary schools: Getting beyond urban legends of apathy.

Parental involvement in schools is a national priority for both educators and researchers to promote the successful schooling of contemporary youth. Contemporary parental involvement research has produced some promising findings, but parental involvement efforts with inner-city African Americans are currently limited by problems of research methodology and program foci. Certain research studies do, however, demonstrate that inner-city African American parents have responded positively to parental involvement programs that emphasize themes of empowerment, outreach, and indigenous resources. Based on these three promising themes, the authors propose practical strategies for increasing inner-city African American parental involvement as a means of increasing parental participation and school success among inner-city African American families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental correlates of children's peer relations: An empirical test of a tripartite model.

In recognition of the multiple pathways through which family and peer systems are linked, this short-term longitudinal study tested a tripartite model of family-peer relationships. One hundred fifty-nine fourth-grade children (82 boys, 77 girls) and their parents participated in a study of the links between parent behaviors and children's peer relations both concurrently and 1 year later. A multimethod approach--including observations of parent?child interactions, parent report, child report, and teacher and peer ratings--was used to evaluate a tripartite model of family-peer relations. Results indicate that parent?child interaction, parent advice giving, and parental provision of opportunities by both mothers and fathers predict children's social competence and, in turn, social acceptance 1 year later. Suggestions for future research and practical implications are noted, and limitations of the study are acknowledged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of Parental Involvement and Support as Predictors of College Students' Persistence in a Science Curriculum.

As technological and scientific skills are increasingly needed, finding that science students encounter significant problems in their academic program causes serious concern. The authors examined how perceived parental involvement and support predict college students' persistence in science based on J. P. Connell and J. G. Wellborn's (1991) theoretical model: Perceived parental involvement and support should foster student persistence by promoting students' competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Results suggest that perceived parental autonomy supports predicted scientific persistence partly through students' autonomy. Perceived parental involvement, although unrelated to persistence, was a significant predictor of autonomy and relatedness. Results suggest that perceived parental involvement and support have specific roles in predicting student self-processes and achievement, highlighting the importance of sustaining parents' contribution for college students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' mastery-oriented involvement in children's homework: Implications for the well-being of children with negative perceptions of competence.

This research examined the idea that parents' mastery-oriented practices while assisting children with homework are particularly beneficial for children with negative perceptions of their academic competence. One hundred fourteen mothers and children (8 to 12 years old) participated in a 2-wave study. At the 1st wave, mothers took part in a daily telephone interview in which they reported on the frequency and nature of their assistance with homework every weekday for 2 weeks. Children reported on multiple dimensions of their psychological functioning at the 1st wave in a daily telephone interview as well as in traditional questionnaires; children completed the questionnaires again 6 months later at the 2nd wave. Mothers' mastery-oriented practices while assisting with homework predicted enhanced psychological functioning both concurrently and longitudinally only among children with negative perceptions of their academic competence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental involvement in middle school: A meta-analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement.

Early adolescence is often marked by changes in school context, family relationships, and developmental processes. In the context of these changes, academic performance often declines, while at the same time the long-term implications of academic performance increase. In promoting achievement across elementary and secondary school levels, the significant role of families, family–school relations, and parental involvement in education has been highlighted. Although there is a growing body of literature focusing on parental involvement in education during middle school, this research has not been systematically examined to determine which types of involvement have the strongest relation with achievement. The authors conducted a meta-analysis on the existing research on parental involvement in middle school to determine whether and which types of parental involvement are related to achievement. Across 50 studies, parental involvement was positively associated with achievement, with the exception of parental help with homework. Involvement that reflected academic socialization had the strongest positive association with achievement. Based on the known characteristics of the developmental stage and tasks of adolescence, strategies reflecting academic socialization are most consistent with the developmental stage of early adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family involvement in school and low-income children's literacy: Longitudinal associations between and within families.

Longitudinal data from kindergarten to 5th grade on both family involvement in school and children's literacy performance were examined for an ethnically diverse, low-income sample (N = 281). Within families, increased school involvement predicted improved child literacy. In addition, although there was an achievement gap in average literacy performance between children of more and less educated mothers if family involvement levels were low, this gap was nonexistent if family involvement levels were high. These results add to existing evidence on the value of family involvement in school by demonstrating that increased involvement between kindergarten and 5th grade is associated with increased literacy performance and that high levels of school involvement may have added reward for low-income children with the added risk of low parent education. As such, these results support arguments that family involvement in school should be a central aim of practice and policy solutions to the achievement gap between lower and higher income children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's Achievement in Early Elementary School: Longitudinal Effects of Parental Involvement, Expectations, and Quality of Assistance.

In this prospective, longitudinal study, the authors examined the relations among parental behaviors, parental expectations, and children's academic achievement. Participants were 187 low-income children and their mothers, studied from birth of the child through 3rd grade. Mothers' quality of instruction prior to school entry had significant direct effects on IQ and indirect effects on achievement in 1st and 3rd grades. Parental expectations in 3rd grade had significant direct effects on parental involvement in 3rd grade. Children's achievement in 1st grade had significant direct effects on parental involvement and expectations in 3rd grade. Parental involvement in 3rd grade had a significant direct effect on achievement in 3rd grade. Results suggest that early parenting factors are important for children's academic achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's autonomy and perceived control in learning: A model of motivation and achievement in Taiwan.

A model of motivation and achievement was tested with data from 50 teachers and 806 Grade 4-6 students in Taiwan. Autonomy as a construct was shown to have ecological validity in Chinese children. The proposed model fit the data well, showing that maternal involvement and autonomy support, as well as teachers' autonomy support, are important for children's autonomy and perceived control. Without the mediation of perceived control, autonomy had a small negative effect on performance; controlling for perceived control, external motivation orientation was a positive predictor for Chinese children's effort and performance. The teachers' reported motivating style, as construed in Western research, does not correspond with Chinese children's perceptions of their teachers nor does it have any relationship with their motivation measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A latent curve model of parental motivational practices and developmental decline in math and science academic intrinsic motivation.

A longitudinal approach was used to examine the effects of parental task-intrinsic and task-extrinsic motivational practices on academic intrinsic motivation in the subject areas of math and science. Parental task-intrinsic practices comprise encouragement of children’s pleasure and engagement in the learning process, whereas task-extrinsic practices comprise parents’ provision of external rewards and consequences contingent on children’s task performance. A conditional latent curve model was fit to data from the Fullerton Longitudinal Study (A. W. Gottfried, A. E. Gottfried, & D. W. Guerin, 2006), with academic intrinsic motivation in math and science assessed from ages 9 to 17 and parental motivational practices measured when children were age 9. The results indicated that task-intrinsic practices were beneficial with regard to children’s initial levels of motivation at age 9 as well as with regard to motivational decline through age 17. Conversely, parents’ use of task-extrinsic practices was adverse with regard to children’s motivation both at age 9 and across the 8-year interval. Theoretical implications of the findings with regard to academic intrinsic motivation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of implicit measures for organizational research: An empirical example.

An increasing amount of attention is being paid by social and cognitive psychologists to implicit processing, which has ubiquitous effects on attitudes and behaviours. Unfortunately, organizational scholars have tended to focus almost exclusively on explicit processing, which limits understanding of how employees function at work if implicit processing does indeed play a role. In this article, the authors argue that implicit processing is likely prevalent in organizational settings and discuss ways that it can be measured. The authors then present the results of an experiment that suggests that organizational justice—an important work-based variable—has implicit effects on motivation. Moreover, the magnitude of explicit and implicit effects was moderated by need for cognition, a stable individual difference variable. These results support the need to examine implicit processing and its effects in organizations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Race as a moderator in a model of sexual harassment: An empirical test.

L. F. Fitzgerald, C. L. Hulin. and F. Drasgow (1995) proposed that victim characteristics, such as race, might moderate the relationships between sexual harassment and its job, psychological, and health status outcomes. This study describes 2 theoretical positions, tokenism and double jeopardy, that could account for this possible moderation by race, as well as the alternative view that no moderating effects exist. The effects of race are empirically examined through simultaneous path analysis. Results indicate that whereas, mean levels of harassment differ across race, the phenomenon of sexual harassment unfolds similarly across races; race is not a moderator of the relationships between sexual harassment and the variables proposed as its antecedents and outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authoritarian parenting in individualist and collectivist groups: Associations with maternal emotion and cognition and children's self-esteem.

Mothers and children between the ages of 7 and 12, from individualist (Western European) and collectivist (Egyptian, Iranian, Indian, and Pakistani) backgrounds, completed assessments of children's self-esteem, maternal authoritarianism, and mothers' thoughts and feelings about their children. Collectivist mothers endorsed authoritarian parenting more than did individualist mothers but did not feel or think more negatively about their children, and collectivist children were not lower in self-esteem. Within both groups, maternal negative affect and cognition were associated with lower self-esteem in children. However, maternal authoritarianism was associated with maternal negative emotion and cognition only in the individualist group. The results suggest that maternal negative thoughts and feelings, associated with authoritarianism in individualist but not collectivist groups, may be more detrimental to children's self-esteem than is authoritarianism in and of itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An integrative cultural view of achievement motivation: Parental and classroom predictors of children's goal orientations when learning mathematics in Korea.

Our goal was to identify how students' perceptions of their parents shape the kind and degree of motivational goal orientations that they adopt in their mathematics classroom, broadening the application of achievement goal orientation theory and self-determination theory to students in Korea. Two groups of students participated, one from a middle school located in a large metropolitan area and the other from a small city high school. Multisample path analysis of data from both groups revealed that Korean students' different goal orientations were predicted by their perceptions of parental goals and motivating styles and by their perceptions of classroom goal structures, mediated by different types of self-regulated motivations. Particularly interesting was the finding that Korean students' degree of mastery goal adoption was associated mostly with identified regulation, not with intrinsic motivation, and predicted by their perceptions of their parents' motivating styles, both autonomy supportive and controlling, in addition to perceptions of parents' mastery goals. Perceptions of classroom goals were stronger predictors of students' own goals than were perceptions of parents' goals and motivating styles. We offer an integration of self-determination theory and achievement goal theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Substance use by college students: The role of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation for athletic involvement.

Certain types of athletic involvement may confer risk for substance use by college students. This study investigated whether motivational factors play a role in the relationship between athletic involvement and substance use. Intercollegiate athletes (n=98) and exercisers (n=120) were surveyed about substance use and motivation for athletic involvement. Athletes and exercisers who were extrinsically motivated had significantly higher rates of alcohol use than their intrinsically motivated counterparts. Results suggest that college students who are extrinsically motivated for involvement in physical activity/athletics--particularly those involved in team sports--may be in need of targeted prevention efforts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental involvement, psychological distress, and sleep: A preliminary examination in sleep-disturbed adolescents with a history of substance abuse.

The relationships between family environment and psychological distress and between psychological distress and sleep disturbance in adolescents are well established. However, less is known about the influence of family environment on sleep disturbance. The authors' goal is to examine the effects of parental involvement on psychological distress and sleep disturbance in 34 adolescents with a history of substance abuse. Linear regression techniques and confidence intervals were used to test the significance of mediation analyses. Lower levels of parental involvement were associated with higher levels of psychological distress, and higher levels of psychological distress were associated with lower sleep efficiency and more time spent in bed. Follow-up analyses found that higher levels of parental involvement were associated with earlier morning arising times, when controlling for psychological distress. These data indicate that psychological distress is important to consider when examining the relationship between parental involvement and sleep in adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interaction model of anxiety: An empirical test in an examination situation.

Tested the interaction model of anxiety in an examination situation. 56 undergraduates completed the self-report Behavioral Reactions Questionnaire (BRQ), a measure of A-state, and measured their pulse rates prior to an important psychology exam. Under nonstressful conditions 2 wks later, Ss again completed the BRQ and measured their pulse rate. In addition they completed the S–R Inventory of General Trait Anxiousness (S–R GTA), a measure of A-trait. The differential hypothesis of the interaction model of anxiety predicted a significant interaction between interpersonal (ego-threatening) A-trait (high vs low) and the ego-threatening situation (exam), in affecting A-state arousal, but no significant interaction between the other facets of A-trait (physical danger, ambiguous, and innocuous) and the threatening exam situation. When pulse rate was used as the dependent variable, the congruent Interpersonal A-Trait?×?ego-stress exam situation interaction was significant. None of the remaining 6 noncongruent person-by-situation interactions was significant except for the Physical Danger A-Trait?×?Situation interaction for BRQ scores. The pulse rates results confirmed the differential predictions of the interaction model of anxiety. Ss responded differentially to the 4 situations of the GTA, and in general the results provide confirmation for the multidimensionality of A-trait. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empowerment and team effectiveness: An empirical test of an integrated model.

The authors developed a model of team empowerment as an emergent state linking inputs (I) with processes (P) and, thereby, with outcomes (O) in the context of an expanded team IPO framework. Using survey responses from 452 members of 121 empowered service technician teams, along with archival quantitative performance and customer satisfaction criteria, the authors tested the model using structural equation modeling techniques. The model was generally supported, although areas for improvement were evident. Specifically, empowerment partially mediated the influences of various inputs on team processes, whereas team processes fully mediated the influence of empowerment on outcomes. Directions for future research and application are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's mathematics achievement: The role of parents' perceptions and their involvement in homework.

Two studies examined the accuracy of parents' assessment of their children's mathematics performance and how this relates to the time parents spend on children's homework. Fourth, 5th, and 6th graders completed a mathematics test. Their parents then predicted their child's test performance. Parents overestimated their children's mathematics scores (Study 1: 17.13%; Study 2: 14.40%). The time parents spent helping their children with mathematics homework was unrelated to children's mathematics performance, parents' predictions of their children's mathematics performance, and the accuracy of parents' predictions of their children's mathematics performance. Although increasing parents' knowledge of their children's mathematics competency should remediate poor mathematics performance of U.S. children, neither homework nor traditional report cards effectively inform parents regarding their children's mathematics performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' and children's expectations for adolescence: The impact of perceptions of an older sibling's experience.

The present study examined the role of perceived experience with an older child in mothers' expectations for subsequent children's adolescence as well as the impact of perceived experience with an older sibling on young adolescent children's expectations for their own adolescence. Participants were 305 sixth- and seventh-grade adolescents and 287 of their mothers. Participants were interviewed via telephone. For both mothers and children, the quality of experience with an older child/sibling was a better predictor of target-based expectations for the young adolescent than was the simple presence or absence of an older sibling. In some cases the link between quality of experience with an earlier born adolescent and mothers' expectations for the target child's adolescence was modified by the target child's temperament. In general, the results support a modeling hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)