This study examines whether the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system influences targeted risk and protective factors and the subsequent development of problem behaviour among adolescents (12-18 years) in the Netherlands. In this quasi-experimental study of ten communities (five experimental, five control), adolescent outcomes were…

Children who experience early and extensive child care, especially center-based care, are rated by teachers as having more externalizing behavior problems than are other children. This association is reduced, but not eliminated, when care is of high quality, and it varies by socioeconomic disadvantage and the type of behavior assessed. We examine…

Academic advisors need to be knowledgeable of the ways students learn. To aid advisors in their exploration of learning theories, I provide an overview of the attribution theory of learning, including recent applications of the theory to research in college student learning. An understanding of this theory may help advisors understand student…

Informed by theory and research on attributions and narrative persuasion, we compared the effectiveness of narrative and nonnarrative messages in changing attributions of responsibility for causes and solutions related to obesity in the United States. We randomly assigned 500 adults to view one of three messages (narrative, evidence, and a hybrid…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the assumption that the impact of cultural diversity on knowledge creating capability is consequent to associated differences in knowledge and perspectives, and suggests that these knowledge differences produce their effect by triggering deliberative, collaborative behaviours. Design/methodology/approach: To…

What events trigger causal explanatory reasoning in young children? Children's explanations could be triggered by either consistent events (suggesting that explanations serve a confirmatory function) or inconsistent events (suggesting that they promote discovery of new information). In 2 studies with preschool children (N = 80), events that were…

Both philosophers and psychologists have argued for the existence of distinct kinds of explanations, including teleological explanations that cite functions or goals, and mechanistic explanations that cite causal mechanisms. Theories of causation, in contrast, have generally been unitary, with dominant theories focusing either on counterfactual…

Research Findings: This study examined the quality of teacher attributions for child disruptive behavior using a new measure, the Preschool Teaching Attributions measure. A sample of 153 early childhood teachers and 432 children participated. All teachers completed the behavior attributions measure, as well as measures regarding demographics,…

In the process of assessing and ensuring quality university studies, students have an important role as partners in the learning community. In this empirical study we therefore analysed the learning experiences to which they themselves attributed a significant influence. We were interested in the type of those influences and the key…

Despite the recent and rapid worldwide rise in body mass index (BMI), little empirical research outside the developed world has systematically considered the role of cohorts in inaugurating emergent biomorphic disparities. This study integrates aspects of the life course perspective (attention to age- and cohort-level influences) with fundamental…

Purpose: This study examined the impact that athletic facilities and other college choice factors have on the recruitment of student-athletes to play Division I college hockey compared to the influence of other college choice factors. Although athletic facilities and their seeming importance in the recruitment of top level student-athletes are…

The acknowledgement that educational achievement is highly dependent on successful reading development, has led to extensive research on its underlying factors. Evidence clearly suggests that the relation between reading skills, phoneme awareness, rhyme awareness, and verbal short-term memory is more than a mere association. A strong argument has…

Longitudinal results for a randomized-controlled trial (RCT) assessing the impact of increasing preschoolers' attention to print during reading are reported. Four-year-old children (N = 550) in 85 classrooms experienced a 30-week shared reading program implemented by their teachers. Children in experimental classrooms experienced shared-book…

We report the results of two replication studies using attribution theory to analyze personal and interpersonal motivation for collaborative projects. Undergraduate students responded to questionnaires containing hypothetical vignettes depicting success or failure outcomes due to ability or effort for dyads working on a group project. Dependent…

Background: The evidence supporting the application of Weiner's motivational model of helping to the behaviour of carers' of people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour is inconsistent. One suggested reason for this is that many studies use stimuli that might generate different responses from those to actual instances of…