A study investigated the extent to which all-Irish primary schools in the Dublin (Ireland) area: (1) provide opportunities for parents not using Irish at home to send children to an all-Irish school; (2) provide impetus for an increase in Irish use in homes of attending children; (3) increase interaction among Irish-speaking families; (4) are…

This document reports the proceedings of a conference on early childhood and family research sponsored by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF). Presentations at the conference consisted of reports of research, literature reviews, descriptions of projects funded by ACYF, and commentaries on research and practice in Head Start.…

This study investigated the effects of cocaine addiction on mothers' ability to care for their children. The population interviewed included 25 cocaine-addicted mothers in a drug treatment center and a comparison group of 25 mothers of children in a Head Start program. Each mother was questioned about: (1) her pregnancy with a specific child…

The ecological perspective suggests that distal socioeconomic status (SES) actually affects young children via the more proximate influences of parental beliefs and the quality of their home environments. A diverse sample of 189 kindergarten children, their families, and their schools provided data on SES indices, parental beliefs, the quality of…

Antisocial behavior can be reduced if services focus on changing the known determinants of behavior problems in the natural environments in which children and families live. The development of multisystemic treatment (MST) gives mental health professionals a powerful new tool for confronting antisocial behavior in children and adolescents,…

This study examined the early childhood care of 4- to 5-year-old children in Nigeria. Data were obtained from 842 Parent Guardian Questionnaires from urban areas and 409 from rural areas. The first part of the report describes the characteristics of the sample population. These items include language used at home; household size and composition;…

This report summarizes in-home behavioral interventions carried out with 18 individuals (ages 3 to 43) with developmental disabilities in the San Diego and North Los Angeles County Regional Centers during 1990-1991. The report focuses on client characteristics, problems that were addressed, intervention procedures used, and results. The paper…

A study was done to determine if certain social variables outside of the school environment would show a relationship with substance abuse. Non-school activities considered were organized athletics, clubs, and music and drama organizations. A survey was distributed to 7,426 secondary school and middle school students in a large Midwestern…

An investigation was made to determine whether family environmental factors influence the educational performance of New Zealand children to an extent similar to that found in other countries. School records of all 1970 third-form entrants at two schools in the greater Wellington area were examined, and a questionnaire was administered to all…

This study was conducted to compare the factors that student dropouts report as contributing to their dropping out of school with those factors that "at-risk" students report as influencing their attitudes toward school. These two sets of factors, assessed in two separate studies, include in-school and out-of-school experiences, socioeconomic…

A study presents descriptive and correlational results from questionnaires and tests administered to approximately 650 children in two cohorts, who, with their parents, are participating in a longitudinal study of reading comprehension development. Results from kindergarten and first-grade students showed low but positive correlations for parents'…

A study of the correlates of cognitive achievement in Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment Program was conducted by examining both individual (student level) and ecological (building level) correlations. Analyses were completed for grade levels 5, 8 and 11 for the 1985 state assessment. Twenty-four student derived condition variables or…

This document on early characteristics of high and low achieving black children of low socioeconomic status is part of the ETS Head Start longitudinal study, Disadvantaged Children and Their First School Experiences. In the study reported here, intensive case studies were prepared for those study children who, on a 3rd-grade achievement test,…

Secondary school teachers in the Houston Independent School District were asked for their perceptions of variables that contributed to difficulty of teaching. A 60-item questionnaire included variables from school environment categories: student characteristics, managerial efficiency, instructional program, material resources, teacher personal…

Participant evaluation research is described as a combination of three recent trends: action research conducted by teachers in their own classrooms, social action programs involving parent and community participation, and subjective epistemology which includes perceptions and contextual information within the accepted database. The planning phase…