Community violence exposure and children's social adjustment in the school peer group: the mediating roles of emotion regulation and social cognition

This study reports a cross-sectional investigation of the relation between community violence exposure and peer group social maladjustment in 285 inner-city children in Grades 4-6 (mean age = 10.3 years). Children completed an inventory assessing exposure to community violence through witnessing and through direct victimization. A peer nomination inventory was then administered to assess social adjustment with peers (aggression, peer rejection, and bullying by peers). In addition, social-cognitive biases and emotion regulation capacities were examined as potential mediators. Analyses indicated that violent victimization was associated with negative social outcomes through the mediation of emotion dysregulation. Witnessed violence was linked only to aggressive behavior. Social information processing, rather than emotion dysregulation, appeared to mediate this association. These results demonstrate that violence exposure is linked to multiple levels of behavioral and social maladjustment and suggest that there are distinct patterns of risk associated with different forms of exposure.     

Trajectories of peer victimization in elementary school children: Associations with changes in internalizing,externalizing, social competence,and school climate

The current study examines the developmental changes (internalizing and externalizing symptoms, social competence, and experiences of school climate) in children who follow distinct trajectories of peer victimization in a sample of elementary school children across 2 years. Data were from children, and their parents and teachers, in Grades 1–3 followed across five waves. Latent class analyses revealed four distinct victimization trajectory groups characterized by chronically high, increasing, decreasing, or low-stable levels across time. Multilevel analyses showed that children in the chronically high peer victimization group had higher initials levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, lower levels of social competence, and poorer experiences of school climate compared to children in the low-stable group. Over time, children in the increasing group had slower rates of increases in social competence than children in the low-stable group and had worsening experiences of school climate compared to children in the low-stable peer victimization group. Findings suggest children who are chronically victimized may be at a developmental disadvantage compared to children who report little or declining peer victimization over time.     

Health behavior: an interlocking personal and social task

Traditional health behavior models comprise only person-centered motivational components such as personal vulnerability perceptions and specific internal control beliefs. However, such factors as social responsibility, perceived prevalence rates of illnesses, attribution of control to societal agencies, and the motivation to engage oneself for public health concerns are not unrelated to individual health protection. Therefore, an alternative model is proposed, which combines traditional self-centered and social variables. This alternative model was empirically confirmed in a questionnaire study exemplified by cancer preventive activities (N = 558), which embraced personal cancer prevention as well as efforts to reduce the cancer prevalence within the general population. The readiness to engage in personal cancer preventive measures appeared to be closely related to the readiness to engage oneself for public health programs. The motivational predictors of both categories of activities had significant overlap. Implications for model building and intervention strategies to promote individual as well as public health behavior are discussed.     

Concurrent validity for an activity vector analysis index of social adjustment

Completed the Activity Vector Analysis (AVA, Form E) and the Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (16PF) in order to examine the concurrent validity of the AVA index of social adjustment (i. e., the assessment of socially acceptable, considerate, thoughtful, ethical, and mature behaviors). Ss were from the greater Kansas City area (N= 114). Results demonstrate that the AVA index of social adjustment strongly correlates with Factors Q_s (Self Sentiment), B (Intelligence), O (Security), F (Seriousness), G (Superego Strength), and Q₂ (Independence) of the 16PF. Results support the validity of the AVA's social adjustment measure.     

Learning through community participation: immunization program at an elementary school.

Many universities are establishing programs to bring health professions students, faculty, and communities together to address the communities' needs using public health models and tools. Such partnerships provide students with the opportunity to put into practice what they learn in the classroom, work together in interdisciplinary teams, and provide communities with access to preventive care and health education. The authors describe the experience of the partnership developed between a Washington, D.C., elementary school and a group of students from the schools of medicine, nursing, and public health and health services of the George Washington University and George Mason University. Working with both an academic preceptor and a community preceptor, the students assessed the schoolchildren's immunization status; prepared informational packets for parents; and organized and conducted an immunization fair at the elementary school. The authors describe how the program was implemented, the results of the program, and lessons learned.     

The Children of Alcoholics Screening Test: relationship to sex, family environment, and social adjustment in adolescents

The Children of Alcoholics Screening Test (CAST), the Family Environment Scale (relationship scales only), and the Social Maladjustment Scale were administered to 494 male and female adolescents with a mean age of 16.6 years. High CAST scores were found to be related significantly to low family cohesion, high family conflict, and low overall family support. CAST scores were not related significantly to family expressiveness or to social maladjustment. Internal consistency reliability estimates for the CAST for both males and females were in the mid .90s. Finally, CAST scores of male and female adolescents were found to differ significantly, which indicates the need for separate validation studies to determine screening cut-points for the two groups.     

Exploring social-emotional learning,school climate,and social network analysis

There is currently limited research on student peer leadership in the social-emotional literature. This paper used exploratory methods of social network analysis to understand the structure of school peer relationships, peer leadership, and school climate. Self-report measures of perceptions of peer leadership and climate were given to students during the 2016–2017 school year. Data collected from a peer leadership survey were used to calculate closeness and indegree centrality values. The results showed that student Ambassadors have higher peer nominated leadership scores compared to non-Ambassador controls and the rest of the school. Additionally, Ambassadors did not demonstrate a change in centrality scores, non-Ambassador students increased in centrality scores, and school climate was not correlated with the leadership centrality score. Results suggest that influence spreads, and that good leadership may be emulated among students, leading to a diffusion effect. This supports the need for good leaders in schools. Additionally, climate may not be associated with leadership centrality scores due to the length of the intervention. Future studies should look toward behavioral data to unravel what comprises positive and negative influences in Social-Emotional and Character Development interventions.     

Peer victimization, psychosocial adjustment, and physical activity in overweight and at-risk-for-overweight youth

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between peer victimization and child and parent reports of psychosocial adjustment and physical activity in a clinical sample of at-risk-for-overweight and overweight children and adolescents. METHODS: The Schwartz Peer Victimization Scale, Children's Depression Inventory-Short Form, Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, Social Physique Anxiety Scale, PACE+ Adolescent Physical Activity Measure, and Asher Loneliness Scale were administered to 92 children and adolescents (54 females) aged 8-18 years. The youth's parent/guardian completed the Child Behavior Checklist. RESULTS: Peer victimization was positively related to child-reported depression, anxiety, social physique anxiety, and loneliness, and parent-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Peer victimization was negatively related to physical activity. Depressive symptoms and loneliness mediated the relations between peer victimization and physical activity. CONCLUSION: Recognition of the magnitude of the problem and the means of evaluating for peer victimization is important for clinicians who work with overweight youth. Assessing peer experiences may assist in understanding rates of physical activity and/or past nonadherence to clinician recommendations.     

Peer victimization and rejection: investigation of an integrative model of effects on emotional, behavioral, and academic adjustment in early adolescence.

This study investigated an integrative model of the effects of peer victimization (PV) and peer rejection (PR) on youth adjustment using data from 508 middle-school students. In the proposed model, PV and PR each contribute independently to problems in emotional, behavioral, and academic adjustment. The adverse consequences of PV and PR are each mediated by their more proximal contributions to lower self-esteem in the form of negative self-evaluations for peer relations and global self-derogation, respectively. Results of structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses provided support for the overall model, including significant indirect linkages of PV and perceived PR with adjustment problems via their intermediary negative associations with lower levels of self-esteem. Additional analyses revealed that indirect linkages of victimization and perceived rejection with emotional problems via self-esteem were evident only for girls. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Initiator status,family support,and adjustment to marital separation: A test of an interaction hypothesis

Fifty-six newly separated, volunteer participants (40 women, 16 men) were examined to determine if depressive symptomatology (as measured by the CES-D) was related to the respondent's active participation in the decision to separate from the spouse (initiator status) and the proportion of family members in their social support network. The relationship between initiator status and depressive symptomatology was marginally significant, F(l, 50) = 3.93, p = 0.053. There was an interaction between initiator status and the proportion of family members in the social network. For initiators, a low proportion of family members was related to increased depressive symptomatology (r = 0.15), whereas for noninitiators, a low proportion of family members was related to increased depressive symptomatology (r = - 0.37), a difference significant at p<.04. It is suggested that the functional ability of the network to be supportive is mediated both by aspects of the individual in need of support and by structural aspects of the network.     

Peer victimization in early adolescence: association between physical and relational victimization and drug use, aggression, and delinquent behaviors among urban middle school students

This study examined associations between two forms of peer victimization, physical and relational, and externalizing behaviors including drug use, aggression, and delinquent behaviors among a sample of 276 predominantly African American eighth graders attending middle school in an urban public school system. Regression analyses indicated that physical victimization was significantly related to cigarette and alcohol use but not to advanced alcohol and marijuana use; relational victimization contributed uniquely to all categories of drug use after controlling for physical victimization. Physical victimization was also significantly related to physical and relational aggression and delinquent behaviors, and relational victimization made a unique contribution in the concurrent prediction of these behaviors. Physical victimization was more strongly related to both categories of alcohol use, aggression, and to delinquent behaviors among boys than among girls. In contrast, relational victimization was more strongly related to physical aggression and marijuana use among girls than among boys, but more strongly related to relational aggression among boys than among girls. These findings provide information about the generalizability of prior research and have important implications for intervention efforts.     

Appraisals of social support: Love,respect, and involvement

The multifaceted nature of social support has become more widely recognized in theory and research. Specifically, a consensus is emerging on the distinctions among support resources, behavior, and appraisals. The present study focuses on support appraisals with the aim of studying the degree to which the Social Support Appraisals Scale (SS-A) might be used to assess distinct appraisals of repect, love, and involvement. SS-A data from five heterogeneous samples (including students, mature women students, fathers, and adolescents) were subjected to factor analysis. The factors that emerged were highly invariant across samples and largely reflected respect, involvement, and love, though the “love” factor might also be interpreted as a “family” factor. Patterns of convergent and divergent validity with subscales reflecting constructs of love, respect, and involvement from two other support appraisal measures were equivocal. Some implications for theory and research of differentiating support appraisals are discussed.     

Vasopressin involvement in antipyresis, social communication, and social recognition: a synthesis.

This review concentrates on the sexually dimorphic neuronal cells and fibers that contain arginine-vasopressin (AVP) and are present in several extrahypothalamic brain areas besides the neurohypophyseal system. Of particular interest are the vasopressinergic neurons that project from the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and the medial amygdala to the lateral septum because their content of vasopressin is a positive function of circulating levels of testosterone. Physiological and behavioral data suggest that androgen-dependent vasopressin plays an important role in antipyresis and social recognition. In addition, there is evidence that extrahypothalamic AVP-sensitive neurons and hypothalamic AVP-containing neurons control scent marking, a form of social communication in hamsters, in a sex-dependent manner. The interrelationships of these different functions of brain vasopressin are discussed.     

Effortful control, social competence, and adjustment problems in children at risk for psychopathology.

This study explored the factor structure and developmental trajectory of effortful control (EC), its relations with child adjustment, and the moderating role of age and gender in 75 4- to 6-year-old children at risk for psychopathology. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed two subcomponents of effortful control: Suppress/Initiate (the ability to inhibit a dominant response while initiating a new response) and Motor Control (inhibiting fine and gross motor activity). EC performance improved with age, and both subcomponents were associated with greater social competence at all ages. Associations with internalizing problems were moderated by child age such that greater EC was linked to fewer problems at age 4 but did not relate to problems at ages 5 or 6.     

Community health psychology: promoting analysis and action for social change

Community health psychology is concerned with the theory and method of working with communities to combat disease and to promote health. This introductory article outlines key assumptions and debates underlying this area of research and practice-in the interests of framing the papers in this special edition of the Journal of Health Psychology. Attention is given to the value of emphasizing the community level of analysis and action; the role of collective action in improving health; psycho-social mediatiors between community participation and health; and the potential role of partnerships in creating 'healthy communities'. A distinction is made between 'accommodationist' and 'critical' perspectives, and the authors consider whether or not significant social change can come from community-level action.