Exploring the factors that benefit academic persistence may facilitate adolescents' positive outcomes to increase the likelihood of future success, especially for adolescents with low family socioeconomic status (SES). Previous research has highlighted the merits of both motivational beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy and interests) and learning…

This study explored prior experiences that shaped literacy motivation beliefs among adolescents with learning disabilities (LD). Data included student and teacher interviews, teacher response scales, and classroom observations. Two cycles of analysis, using directed content and thematic approaches, resulted in findings that indicate two types of…

The current study compared differences between mindset beliefs about intelligence (fixed vs. growth), dimensions of perfectionism (Concern Over Mistakes, Doubt of Action, Personal Standards, Organization), and achievement attitudes among gifted underachievers (n = 15) and gifted achievers (n = 169) in Grades 6 to 8 and examined the relationship…

Four topics were investigated in this longitudinal person-centered study: (a) profiles of subjective task values and ability self-concepts of adolescents in the domain of mathematics, (b) the stability of and changes to the profiles of motivational beliefs from Grade 7 to 12, (c) the relation of changes to student-perceived classroom…

Expectations about alcohol's effects and perceptions of peers' behaviors and beliefs related to alcohol use are each shown to strongly influence the timing of drinking onset during adolescence. The present study builds on prior work by examining the conjoint effects of within-person changes in these social-cognitive factors on age of adolescent…

This study explored an understudied promotive factor, a belief that alcohol use is inconsistent with personal autonomy, which may reduce adolescent intention to drink and subsequent alcohol use. Autonomy was examined as an attitudinal construct within the Theory of Reasoned Action. Longitudinal data from 2,493 seventh grade students nested in 40…

We assessed linkages between parents' beliefs and their children's self-construals with 60 7th and 8th graders. Early adolescents completed an open-ended, Self-Guide Questionnaire and an independent and interdependent reaction-time measure. The self-guide responses were coded for independent and interdependent traits. Parents reported beliefs…

Using primary socialization theory and theory of planned behavior, this study examined how targeted parent-child communication against substance use and parents' references to the negative consequences of their own past substance use (from the youth's perspective) directly and indirectly relate to Latino and European American youth's external…

Two studies explored the role of implicit theories of intelligence in adolescents' mathematics achievement. In Study 1 with 373 7th graders, the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) predicted an upward trajectory in grades over the two years of junior high school, while a belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory)…

Evaluation with over 4,000 seventh and eighth graders in California and Oregon showed that Project ALERT, a curriculum to curb drug use by teaching resistance to pressures, successfully dampened cognitive risk factors for cigarette and marijuana use but had limited impact on beliefs about alcohol. (SK)

Explores first-, fourth-, and seventh-grade children's expectation of responses from parents and peers for accepting or refusing a drink. Children in all three grades expected negative reactions from parents. More fourth- and seventh-, than first-graders, expected positive peer reactions to drinking and anticipated strongly negative peer reactions…

This document reports on the history of social and behavioral research studies concerning nuclear war since 1945, highlighting those studies that focused on adolescents and their feelings of fear, hopelessness, powerlessness, and denial. A study, designed to assess the reactions of adolescents in grades six to eight to the threat of nuclear war is…

In the study of students' achievement behavior, it has been argued that learning goals that emphasize self-improvement rather than outperforming others are more desirable. This study examined how students' learning goal orientations were related to their theories of intelligence (e.g., whether intelligence is inborn). The subjects were 400 Chinese…

This document on the life cycle contains the 7th grade teacher background material, student activities component, and a unit test. The major objective of the unit is to encourage students to think critically about their own past and future through examination of how people in various cultures live. The teacher background component is presented in…