Objective: To examine changes in psychological distress of college students as a function of demographic and psychological variables over time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants: Subjects were recruited from a large public university in Northeast Ohio using electronic surveys administered at three time points in 2020. Methods:…

This study takes a social cognitive approach in examining the relationship between elements of the adolescent self-system (self-efficacy, self-esteem, ethnic-racial identity, and hope) in addition to state-mandated graduation tests, with students' later participation in higher education. The quantitative investigation of 733 tenth-grade White…

Individuals with disabilities do not access postsecondary education at the same rate as their peers without disabilities. This gap is unfortunate, as research shows that when students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) participate in postsecondary education, they have improved physical, social, and employment outcomes. To…

One year after the COVID-19 quarantine, we conducted an eight-week pilot study with third graders (n = 246), who took a repeating knowledge, attitude, and behavior pretest and a reading comprehension posttest from the eBook for Oral Health Literacy© curriculum. Our research questions were: 1) Will the knowledge, attitude, and behaviors of third…

Studies commonly measure the challenges of caring for autistic adolescents and young adults, but scarcely explore the positive aspects of the caregiving experience. This study employed an equal-status concurrent mixed methods approach to quantitatively assess predictors of positive aspects of caregiving and qualitatively examine 174 caregivers'…

Guided by argumentation schema theory, we conducted five psychological studies in the United States and China on arguments about vaccination. Study 1 replicated research about arguments on several topics, finding that agreement judgments are weighted toward claims, whereas quality judgments are weighted toward reasons. However, consistent with…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many school accountability systems that rely on student-level achievement data. Many states encountered uncertainty about how to meet federal accountability requirements without typical school data. Prior research provides evidence that student achievement is correlated to students' social background, which raises…

The purpose of this study was to examine the phenomenon of implicit bias in the referral process for special education. The study explored the relationship between independent variables such as student and teacher race/ethnicity, gender of teacher, teachers' years of teaching experience, and how likely teachers would refer a male student for…

In online virtual-based learning, combining more adaptive personal student characteristics with risk factors, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between student at-risk factors and mathematics achievement. Further, the study examined how personal student characteristics, which are sometimes amenable to change and…

Background: Affective associations have been shown to predict physical activity, but interventions designed to manipulate affective associations are limited. Purpose: To increase physical activity through manipulation of affective associations toward physical activity using the values component from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in…