To examine developmental processes, intervention effects, or both, longitudinal studies often aim to include measurement intervals that are equally spaced for all participants. In reality, however, this goal is hardly ever met. Although different approaches have been proposed to deal with this issue, few studies have investigated the potential…

The aim of the current investigation was to compare the association between attachment and behaviour problems in children attending regular schools and children attending special education schools with a focus on emotional and social development. We draw upon data collected from 169 children attending regular schools (M[subscript age] = 9.66), and…

Although scientific reasoning is not a formal, independent school subject, it is an increasingly important skill, especially for student learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. To promote scientific reasoning effectively, it is important to know its influencing factors. While cognitive influences have been…

The few studies about whether parents' implicit theories about ability (ITs) predict their children's academic success and relevant parental behavior have produced mixed results. In response, research suggested that parents' ITs might be more important in contexts that make children's intellectual potential salient. Therefore, we investigated the…

Equity issues in the field of arts and culture play an important role when it comes to extracurricular activities in education. Students with special educational needs (SEN) seem not provided with equal access. Using nation-wide random samples of fourth- and fifth-graders courtesy of the German National Education Panel Study (NEPS), the main…

Satisfaction and frustration of the basic psychological need for relatedness have been postulated to play a vital role for affective well-being. Yet, this prediction has not been thoroughly tested in schoolchildren's everyday lives. In this work, we examined the association between relatedness satisfaction and frustration at school on daily and…

This study investigates consistent and inconsistent respondents to mixed-worded questionnaire scales in large-scale assessments. Mixed-worded scales contain both positively and negatively worded items and are universally applied in different survey and content areas. Due to the changing wording, these scales require a more careful reading and…

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

This study is a substantive-methodological synergy in which exploratory structural equation modeling is applied to investigate the factor structure of multidimensional self-concept instruments. On the basis of a sample of German students (N = 1958) who completed the Self-Description Questionnaire I and the Self-Perception Profile for Children, the…

Researchers have used various theories to explain deaf individuals' reading skills, including the dual route reading theory, the orthographic depth theory, and the early language access theory. This study tested 4 groups of children--hearing with dyslexia, hearing without dyslexia, deaf early signers, and deaf late signers (N = 857)--from 4…

One aim of environmental education is fostering sustainable environmental action. Some environmental behaviour models suggest that this can be accomplished in part by improving people's knowledge. Recent studies have identified a distinct, psychometrically supported environmental knowledge structure consisting of system, action-related and…

In 19 (sub)samples from seven countries (United States, Austria, Germany, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Vietnam, Brazil), we analyzed the impact of parental education compared with wealth on the cognitive ability of children (aged 4-22 years, total N = 15,297). The background of their families ranged from poor indigenous remote villagers to academic…

During the transition from elementary school to secondary school, in Germany, students are assigned to different school tracks, academic or non-academic, that differ markedly in compositional and institutional characteristics, e.g., the level of cognitive activation and performance standards are higher in academic tracks than in non-academic…

The often observed decline in students' self-perceptions across transition to secondary school after grade 6 is often attributed to students' entry to puberty. This study aims to examine whether lowered self-perceptions can be observed after transition in Germany which occurs after grade 4 and thus takes place before puberty. Fifth graders (N =…