Berkeley Nutrition Study followed 180 children longitudinally to investigate whether child rearing practices, health beliefs, demographics, and parental characteristics related to childhood obesity. Results indicated a high mother-daughter correlation. Other factors included how often per day the child ate, irregular eating patterns, and parental…

Describes research on the development of chronic conduct problems in childhood and adolescence, examining a multiple risk-factor model that includes biological predispositions, ecological context, family processes, peer influences, academic performance, and social information processing as factors leading to conduct problems. The paper describes a…

Discusses strategies and techniques for communicating physical education and physical activity-related messages to local school boards, noting that without their support, efforts to promote physical education and healthful activity will be difficult. The paper includes three sections: positioning the argument, persevering in the message, and…

Describes evaluation results from 12 months of the Western Australia School Health (WASH) Project, a school health-promotion intervention that used community-development strategies to help schools identify and respond to relevant health concerns. Surveys of intervention and comparison schools indicated that schools successfully made organizational…

Presents an inventory of federal activities that address violence in schools. Agencies were asked to identify all ongoing activities and recently completed efforts regarding school violence. The resulting categories include: surveillance activities, evaluation research activities, other research activities, research synthesis and application…

Children with chronic ear infections experience a lag time in understanding speech, which inhibits classroom participation and the ability to make friends, and ultimately reduces self-esteem. Difficulty in hearing affects speech and vocabulary development, reading and writing proficiency, and academic performance, and could lead to placement in…

Examined preschool children's behavior problems as a consequence of mother's social and economic characteristics; maternal lifestyle; maternal mental state and child-rearing practices; and maternal and child physical health. Found that major predictors of toddler behavior problems were mother and child health and mother's mental state. Findings…

Family Resource Centers/Youth Services Centers were mandated within Kentucky's Education Reform Act to help the state's disadvantaged children and families. The school-based centers provide services to maintain basic necessities and enhance children's health and learning. The article describes how centers are developed, funded, staffed, governed,…

Findings from interviews of street children in Pretoria, South Africa, are presented, discussed, and compared with past research. Indicates the average age of South African street children is 13 years. Most are males of African origin; have been on the streets three years or longer; and cited family violence, parental alcoholism, abuse, and…

A school census of three rural regions of Ghana examined enrollments, student age and gender, age at first enrollment, gender disparities among classes, dropouts, and the proportion of never-enrolled children. Focus group discussions with parents, teachers, and children highlighted major obstacles confronting education: child labor, health…

Examined the developmental characteristics of children in three income groups and related them to family characteristics and experiences in child care. Found that on most family background variables and in the cognitive and social child outcomes, the income groups differed significantly, with levels of functioning ranging downward from…

Presents School Health Policies and Programs Study 2000 findings about state- and district-level policies and practices regarding various school food service issues, e.g., organization and staffing, food service and child nutrition requirements and recommendations, menu planning and food preparation, and collaboration. Also addressed are food…

Early childhood motor activity programs at institutions of higher learning can operate within the tripartite mission of the university while serving a vital function in providing leadership and guidance to educators. This article describes the University of Northern Iowa's Kindergym model. Within this model, curricular areas of games/sports,…

The seven cohort studies of the relation between prenatal and postnatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to cognitive, neuropsychological and behavioral development have suggested that exposure to PCBs can cause persistent changes in cognitive functioning. D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, and S.S. Sparrow (this issue) apply six scientific…

In this paper we address the points raised by groups of scientists who were invited to respond to our initial critique of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) research in this special issue. In that article, we applied six objective criteria to more than two decades of published PCB research and concluded that much of the research was badly flawed. The…