This research examined parents' involvement in children's learning in the United States and China. Beginning in seventh grade, 825 American and Chinese children (mean age = 12.74 years) reported on their parents' involvement in their learning as well as their parents' psychological control and autonomy support every 6 months until the end of 8th…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the following: (a) the impact of sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family income on the likelihood of whole-grade skipping between kindergarten and Grade 7 and (b) the effects of grade skipping during elementary or middle school on students' academic achievement in high school. The authors…

This study investigates shared and unique associations of early adolescent friendship and peer victimization with self reports of school liking and teacher reports of academic competence. Participants were 398 sixth and seventh grade students and their teachers and peers. Measures of friendship included self reports of friendship support and…

The current study is an investigation of early adolescents' perceptions of social support from parents, teachers, classmates, and close friends, and how that support is related to measures of students' adjustment on a range of behavioral indices. Data were collected on a sample of 246 students in Grades 6 through 8 using the Child and Adolescent…

This study examined how relocation to a new community affects intimacy and companionship in close friendships by comparing experiences of early adolescents who began their 7th or 8th grade school year in a new community (111 boys, 96 girls) with those of residentially stable agemates (30 boys, 38 girls). Drawing from a developmental contextual,…

The present study used an ecological framework to examine the relationships among adolescents' perceptions of school climate, social competence, and behavioral and psychological adjustment in the middle school years. This study improved upon prior studies by using "structural equation modeling" to investigate the hypothesized mediating…

The authors examined relations among motivational styles and school adjustment in a sample of 786 7th and 8th grade U.S. students. Specifically, the authors tested the hypothesis that agency beliefs mediate relations between styles of motivational self-regulation (i.e., intrinsic, identified, introjected, and extrinsic) and school adjustment…