Objective: This study tested a multilevel biobehavioral family model proposing that negative family emotional climate contributes to child depressive symptoms, which in turn contribute to asthma disease severity. Parent-child relational insecurity is proposed as a mediator. Method: Children with asthma (N = 112; ages 7-18; 55% male) reported…

This study investigated the role that emotional factors play in learning about sexual health and in adopting sexually healthy behaviors. Learning about health and adopting healthy behaviors hinges on two variables: the desire to avoid illness and a belief that one can avoid threats to health through personal action. This paper reports on…

Efforts to foster mental health care in society have always been hampered by the stigma attached to mental illness. To identify differential patterns of attitude hierarchies among people who live in or provide mental health services in a typical urban area, 54 adults participated in a Q methodology study of their attitudes toward mental illness.…

A study measured the effect of reading materials containing positive depictions of aging and the elderly on the attitudes of primary grade children toward aging and elderly adults. Subjects, 91 students from grades one to three enrolled in a Jacksonville, Florida public school, read stories selected from "aging/elderly positive"…

This manual was designed to help teachers of the early secondary grades deal with fear, ignorance, and prejudice in students encountering the problem of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and its transmission. Three groups of students are of particular concern: those who are victims of abusive remarks, those who feel AIDS is reserved for…

As socially supported institutions, schools must take their share of the responsibility for developing a comprehensive curriculum about family life and sexuality education. Schools have the opportunity to integrate sound sexual information, understanding of attitudes, and the development of knowledge related to sexual matters along with…

Research on the topic of writing apprehension--general tendency to anxiety that is triggered by the situation of writing--has recently been stimulated by the development of a self-report scale to measure it. Research in the effects of writing apprehension reveals that students who are anxious about writing choose coursework, majors, and…

Research on the causes, prediction, and specific problems of learning disabled children is reviewed for the years 1967-1978. The literature on the following questions is examined: Can learning disabilities be predicted and will early identification help alleviate the problem? Can training programs significantly remediate reading disabilities? What…

People United for Rural Education (PURE), organized in Iowa in 1977, now has about 3,000 members in 23 states and 3 foreign countries. PURE's purpose is to ensure the survival of rural schools and to promote rural life as a viable and credible way of life. One of the organization's most difficult tasks is to counteract urban attitudes towards…

A minority group is a social category involving a clearly differentiated subpopulation within a larger collectivity on the basis of some common set of characteristics which are negatively evaluated by the dominant members of the collectivity. The following characteristics are attributed to negative evaluation: (1) members experience pejorative…

A report is given of an investigation examining the influence of student dialect and ethnicity on teachers' expectations of academic performance. The subjects of the study were secondary level teaching candidates enrolled in a generic methods course comprised of ethnically mixed learners. A control group of the teachers was given a course in…

THESE QUOTED CONVERSATIONS WITH FOUR NEGRO AND PUERTO RICAN STUDENTS AT BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HIGH SCHOOL IN EAST HARLEM REVEAL THE NEGATIVE FEELINGS OF TWO OF THE TEENAGERS ABOUT THE VALUE OF AN EDUCATION AND THE MOBILITY ASPIRATIONS OF THE OTHER TWO. THE TALKS SHOW A FATALISTIC HOPELESSNESS ABOUT THE BARRIERS IMPOSED BY RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND A…

A teacher's attitudes toward a given testing procedure in particular, and evaluation and research procedures in general, may adversely affect the children's performance and consequently the resulting data. The UCLA Head Start Evaluation and Research Center found it necessary to design an instrument which would focus on those attitudes of teachers…

The psychological role of the father in the life of an adolescent is crucial. Delinquent adolescent males have severe problems in the oedipal area. Most have had negative father-son relationships. The study group was composed of 25 boys who were on parole. Outpatient psychiatric treatment was a condition of their parole. Of the 25, 23 had fathers…

This study determined the effects of assigning students from speech classes to one of 14 positive sociometrically determined groups, 14 negative sociometrically determined groups, or 14 randomly determined groups upon individuals' satisfaction with the group and the time needed to solve a specific test problem. All significant differences among…