Social network analysis (SNA) consists of a broad set of frameworks and methods to assess how direct and indirect relationships influence individual functioning. Although interest in SNA has steadily increased in the psychological sciences, school psychology has not kept pace. This article provides a general overview of core SNA concepts,…

The papers making up this Special Section reveal important findings and begin to fill gaps in existing literature about children's and young people's understanding and developing beliefs about socio-economic inequality and poverty. We draw on our research experience with children growing up in poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam (Young…

The use of propensity scores as a method to promote causality in studies that cannot use random assignment has increased dramatically since its original publication in 1983. While the utility of these approaches is important, the concepts underlying their use are complex. The purpose of this article is to provide a basic tutorial for conducting…

School violence and bullying are two public health concerns with consequences for youth in and out of school, for families, students, and community members. In this article, a social-ecological framework is briefly described as a way to understand bullying and school violence; then the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) longitudinal…

Two models for the analysis of longitudinal binary data are discussed: the marginal model and the random intercepts model. In contrast to the linear mixed model (LMM), the two models for binary data are not subsumed under a single hierarchical model. The marginal model provides group-level information whereas the random intercepts model provides…

In June 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games enjoy full free speech protections and that the regulation of violent game sales to minors is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court also referred to psychological research on violent video games as "unpersuasive" and noted that such research contains many methodological flaws.…

The article discusses a research instrument developed and utilized by the Pittsburgh Girls Study that asked young girls (ages 7 and 8) and their caretakers to report on the girls' involvement in a variety of problem behaviors. In this article, the authors evaluate whether comprehension, prevalence, and caretaker-child concordance of problem…

As in other Latin American and Caribbean nations, young women in Belize have made remarkable strides in enrollment in and completion of secondary schooling. In fact, adolescent girls did so well during the 1990s that the usual explanations of increased access to schooling and governmental policy aimed at increasing girls' education did not appear…

In the past 2 decades, important insights have been gained regarding violence and trauma. Complications occur in how violence and trauma, their causes, and their effects on victims should be defined. Violence and abuse to women- physical, sexual, and emotional - are not rare events and are most often perpetrated by partners or acquaintances rather…

Dramatic rises in youth violence in the United States beginning in the 1980s coupled with high visibility acts such as school shootings have resulted in a corresponding proliferation of programs designed to prevent aggression and violence in children and youth. Parallel with this increasing programmatic expansion, there have been repeated calls…

This paper reports errors in the article "A Brief Actuarial Assessment for the Prediction of Wife Assault Recidivism: The Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment," by N. Zoe Hilton, Grant T. Harris, Marnie E. Rice, Carol Lang, Catherine A. Cormier, and Kathryn J. Lines (Psychological Assessment, 2004, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 267-275). On page 272,…

A central theme of research on human development and psychopathology is whether a therapeutic intervention or a turning-point event, such as a family break-up, alters the trajectory of the behavior under study. This paper lays out and applies a method for using observational longitudinal data to make more confident causal inferences about the…

This document is comprised of summaries of six papers presented at a symposium on the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, a federal grant to school districts intended to promote health and safety in schools and communities. The Initiative was designed to confront school violence, safety, and mental health needs through the provision of a…

A report on hate-crimes in the 1980s in Los Angeles County (California) found that these acts had increased in number. Hate crimes are defined as criminal acts directed at an individual, institution, or business expressly because of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Over the period 1980 to 1989, religiously motivated hate crimes…