Fear of Deportation and Hispanic Early Adolescent Substance Use: a Moderated Mediation Model of Stress and Hope.

Reports of deportation can create a state of chronic fear in children living in mixed-status immigrant families over their own or a loved one's potential deportation. One indicator of health disparities among youth is elevated rates of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD). Yet little is known about the effects of fear of deportation (FOD) on ATOD or what might promote resilience. We explore the associations between FOD and ATOD use, how stress mediates this relationship, and whether hope moderates the mediated pathway from FOD to ATOD. Participants were 200 first- and second-generation 7th grade Hispanic youth (49% female) assessed across three waves of data. A moderated mediation model tested the indirect effect of FOD on ATOD through stress and whether hope moderated these associations. FOD was measured by the Family Fear of Deportation Scale. Snyder's Children's Hope Scale measured hope. Stress was measured by a short version of Pediatric Psychological Stress Measure. ATOD was adapted from the Monitoring the Future project. FOD was not directly associated with ATOD use. However, this path was fully mediated by stress. Hope significantly moderated the path from FOD to stress such that a one unit increase in hope completely offset the effects of FOD on stress. Hope did not moderate the path from stress to ATOD use. Interventions that increase awareness of deportation trauma, alleviate stress, and promote hope may help prevent, delay initiation into, and/or decrease ATOD among Hispanic first- and second-generation youth.

Dual-centered ANCOVA: Resolving contradictory results from Lord's paradox with implications for reducing bias in longitudinal analyses.

INTRODUCTION: Valid causal inferences are necessary to use developmental research to improve adolescent outcomes. What type of change should be analyzed to approximate causal inferences from longitudinal data? Difference-score and ANCOVA-type analyses often produce contradictory results, a problem known as Lord's paradox. This study investigates 2-group, 2-wave difference-score analyses and ANCOVA, and introduces a method that produces consistent results, namely dual-centered ANCOVA, which is compared to pretest matching. METHODS: These methods are tested first on two datasets simulated to fit each of Lord's contrasting results. The methods are then applied to data investigating the longitudinal associations of parent-adolescent discussions about sexual risks on subsequent unprotected sexual behaviors in 4753 American adolescents (62.2% whites). RESULTS: The results replicate Lord's contradictory results for all datasets. Dual-centered ANCOVA and pretest matching both produce consistent results, but dual-centered ANCOVA replicates the original results for difference-score analyses, whereas pretest matching replicates the original ANCOVA results. Thus, the two sets of consistent results differ from each other as much as the original discrepancy rather than reducing bias. CONCLUSION: The least biased analysis is the one whose null hypothesis best approximates a plausible change pattern to represent a no-treatment effect. When difference-score analyses are thought to approximate valid causal inferences as closely as ANCOVA-type analyses, dual-centered ANCOVA estimates the difference-score effect while retaining the advantages of ANCOVA in statistical power and covariate inclusion. These findings are widely applicable to longitudinal analyses that incorporate one or both of these basic methods to analyze change.

Improving Causal Inferences in Meta-analyses of Longitudinal Studies: Spanking as an Illustration.

To evaluate and improve the validity of causal inferences from meta-analyses of longitudinal studies, two adjustments for Time-1 outcome scores and a temporally backwards test are demonstrated. Causal inferences would be supported by robust results across both adjustment methods, distinct from results run backwards. A systematic strategy for evaluating potential confounds is also introduced. The methods are illustrated by assessing the impact of spanking on subsequent externalizing problems (child age: 18 months to 11 years). Significant results indicated a small risk or a small benefit of spanking, depending on the adjustment method. These meta-analytic methods are applicable for research on alternatives to spanking and other developmental science topics. The underlying principles can also improve causal inferences in individual studies.

Parent report of conversations with their adolescents with intellectual disability.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine parent report of conversations about difference and disability in families of adolescents with intellectual disability. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Participants included 50 parents (44 mothers, four fathers, and two other caregivers) and their adolescents with intellectual disability (M age = 15.9). Parents provided written responses to open-ended questions regarding conversations with their adolescent. Adolescents completed measures of self-concept and self-determination. RESULTS: The majority (66%) of parents reported talking to their adolescent about difference and/or disability. Consistent with previous research, some of these conversations were in response to social exclusion (e.g. child was bullied). Parents who knew the aetiology of their child's disability were significantly more likely to talk with their child about his or her disabling condition. CONCLUSIONS: Parents' narratives illustrate their struggle to explain disability to their adolescent. Professionals are challenged to consider how to promote proactive conversations between parents and adolescents.

Hope for Latino immigrant youth: A longitudinal test of Snyder's Children's Hope Scale.

Objective: To examine the psychometric properties of Snyder's Children's Hope Scale (CHS) with first- and second-generation Latino immigrant youth, using item response theory, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and measurement invariance tests. Background: Stress experienced by youth in 2020 has heightened interest in resilience factors such as hope. The CHS is widely used to measure hope but has not been validated for longitudinal assessments with immigrant populations. Methods: Participants were 233 low socioeconomic status first- and second-generation Latino immigrant youth (50.43% female, 62% U.S.-born, and 81% of Mexican heritage). Data were collected at two timepoints spanning 4 weeks. Results: Rather than the original six-item two-dimensional scale, our results supported a four-item one-dimensional scale, with excellent model fit, strong invariance across time, by gender and generation status, good reliability (α = .81), and the expected negative association with stress. Conclusions: The four-item Hope scale is suitable for longitudinal assessments with first- and second-generation Latino immigrant populations and can be used for examining differences by gender and generation status in research and practice to assess youth resilience. Implications: This study underscores the need for practitioners and researchers to rigorously investigate the psychometric properties of a measure before its use with diverse populations.

Ethnic Differences in the Effects of Five Disciplinary Techniques on Subsequent Externalizing Behavior Problems.

To identify disciplinary alternatives to replace spanking, this study investigated ethnic differences in the associations of five disciplinary techniques with subsequent externalizing behavior problems in a national sample of 7- to 11-year-olds with ANCOVAs and difference-score analyses. Most techniques led to significant reductions in externalizing problems for African-Americans or Hispanics, but only after overcoming known biases in ANCOVA and not for other European-Americans. Privilege removal had the most significantly effective results, followed by grounding. Sending children to their room and spanking significantly reduced externalizing problems only in one or two analyses for African-Americans, whereas removing children's allowance was significantly effective in one overall analysis. Parenting research needs to distinguish between more vs. less effective use of all disciplinary techniques across multiple situational and cultural contexts.

Validation of the Family Fear of Deportation Scale for youth.

Objective: This study reports on the psychometric properties of a new instrument to assess family fear of deportation in two versions (binary and polytomous response options). Background: The impact of fear of deportation extends beyond foreign-born youth to U.S. citizen children in families with unauthorized members, and negatively affects their academic achievement and their physical, mental, and behavioral health. A measure assessing levels of fear of deportation among youth is lacking. Methods: Participants were first- and second-generation Latino immigrant youth (N = 145 in Study 1 and N = 107 in Study 2). Item response theory (IRT), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), correlation analysis, and reliability tests were used to assess the scale's psychometric properties. Results: The results supported a five-item binary version and a six-item polytomous version of the scale. Both demonstrated excellent model fit, good reliability, and criterion validity. Conclusions: The six-item polytomous version is slightly more parsimonious than the five-item binary version scale, has better internal consistency, and captures a modestly wider range of the construct. The binary version may be preferable for immigrant youth who prefer straightforward response options. Implications: Researchers and practitioners can use either version of the Family Fear of Deportation Scale with confidence to assess deportation-related fear among Latino immigrant youth.

Shared Language Erosion: Rethinking Immigrant Family Communication and Impacts on Youth Development.

In this paper we make the case for Shared Language Erosion as a potential explanation for the negative outcomes described in the immigrant paradox for second- and third- generation immigrants (e.g., declines in physical, mental, and behavioral health). While not negating the important role of cultural adaptation, we posit that parent-child communication difficulties due to a process we are calling Shared Language Erosion is driving the observed affects previously attributed to changes in cultural values and beliefs. Shared Language Erosion is the process during which adolescents improve their English skills while simultaneously losing or failing to develop their heritage language; at the same time their parents acquire English at a much slower rate. This lack of a common shared language makes it difficult for parents and their adolescent children to effectively communicate with each other, and leads to increased parent-child conflict, reduced parental competence, aggravated preexisting flaws in parent-child attachment, and increased adolescent vulnerability to deviant peer influences.

Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking? a comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking.

BACKGROUND: The strongest causal evidence that customary spanking increases antisocial behavior is based on prospective studies that control statistically for initial antisocial differences. None of those studies have investigated alternative disciplinary tactics that parents could use instead of spanking, however. Further, the small effects in those studies could be artifactual due to residual confounding, reflecting child effects on the frequency of all disciplinary tactics. This study re-analyzes the strongest causal evidence against customary spanking and uses these same methods to determine whether alternative disciplinary tactics are more effective in reducing antisocial behavior. METHODS: This study re-analyzed a study by Straus et al.1 on spanking and antisocial behavior using a sample of 785 children who were 6 to 9 years old in the 1988 cohort of the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The comprehensiveness and reliability of the covariate measure of initial antisocial behavior were varied to test for residual confounding. All analyses were repeated for grounding, privilege removal, and sending children to their room, and for psychotherapy. To account for covarying use of disciplinary tactics, the analyses were redone first for the 73% who had reported using at least one discipline tactic and second by controlling for usage of other disciplinary tactics and psychotherapy. RESULTS: The apparently adverse effect of spanking on antisocial behavior was replicated using the original trichotomous covariate for initial antisocial behavior. A similar pattern of adverse effects was shown for grounding and psychotherapy and partially for the other two disciplinary tactics. All of these effects became non-significant after controlling for latent comprehensive measures of externalizing behavior problems. CONCLUSIONS: These results are consistent with residual confounding, a statistical artifact that makes all corrective actions by parents and psychologists appear to increase children's antisocial behavior due to child effects on parents. Improved research methods are needed to discriminate between effective vs. counterproductive implementations of disciplinary tactics. How and when disciplinary tactics are used may be more important than which type of tactic is used.

Diana Blumberg Baumrind (1927-2018).

This article memorializes Diana Blumberg Baumrind (1927-2018). In her illustrious career at the Institute of Human Development at UCB, Diana largely focused on understanding the parent-child relationship. Diana was the lifelong director of the Family Socialization and Developmental Competence Project at UCB, where she undertook her longitudinal program of parenting research. Diana's research was devoted to identifying qualitative variations in direct, dyadic, and normative interactions that mothers and fathers have with their children. Diana's life work has spawned much research and has been extended to examine cultural variations in parenting, teaching styles, and leadership styles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The insufficiency of the evidence used to categorically oppose spanking and its implications for families and psychological science: Comment on Gershoff et al. (2018).

Gershoff et al. (2018) recently summarized the scientific evidence against disciplinary spanking, using epidemiological and psychological criteria for causal validity. Unfortunately, the evidence they cited would make most actions to correct serious problems appear to be harmful, whether implemented by parents (e.g., timeout) or professionals. The reason is that the type of evidence that Gershoff et al. consider adequate is insufficient for establishing a causal connection between any disciplinary response to persistent defiance and problem behaviors in children, whether that response is spanking or an effective alternative to spanking. Before opposing a widespread practice such as spanking, researchers need to document stronger causal evidence against it and identify an alternative demonstrated to be more effective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Initial reliability of a Turkish version of the Dyadic Trust Scale.

The Dyadic Trust Scale, previously adapted for a range of applications in organizational research, was translated into Turkish in this study and evaluated with a sample of 117 service employees (69 men and 48 women), whose mean age was 21.5 yr. (SD = 1.8). The internal consistency of the Turkish version was estimated with a Cronbach alpha of .90. Test-retest reliability was .88. Both principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis supported the prior unidimensional structure of the eight items. These findings indicate that the Turkish version provides a reliable assessment of interpersonal trust in a service environment.

Comparing child outcomes of physical punishment and alternative disciplinary tactics: a meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis investigates differences between the effect sizes of physical punishment and alternative disciplinary tactics for child outcomes in 26 qualifying studies. Analyzing differences in effect sizes reduces systematic biases and emphasizes direct comparisons between the disciplinary tactics that parents have to select among. The results indicated that effect sizes significantly favored conditional spanking over 10 of 13 alternative disciplinary tactics for reducing child noncompliance or antisocial behavior. Customary physical punishment yielded effect sizes equal to alternative tactics, except for one large study favoring physical punishment. Only overly severe or predominant use of physical punishment compared unfavorably with alternative disciplinary tactics. The discussion highlights the need for better discriminations between effective and counterproductive use of disciplinary punishment in general.

Many replications do not causal inferences make: the need for critical replications to test competing explanations of nonrandomized studies.

Although direct replications are ideal for randomized studies, areas of psychological science that lack randomized studies should incorporate Rosenbaum's (2001) distinction between trivial and nontrivial replications, relabeled herein as exact and critical replications. If exact replications merely repeat systematic biases, they cannot enhance cumulative progress in psychological science. In contrast, critical replications distinguish between competing explanations by using crucial tests to clarify the underlying causal influences. We illustrate this potential with examples from research on corrective actions by professionals (e.g., psychotherapy, Ritalin) and parents (e.g., spanking, homework assistance), where critical replications are needed to overcome the inherent selection bias due to corrective actions being triggered by children's symptoms. Purported causal effects must first prove to be replicable after plausible confounds such as selection bias are eliminated. Subsequent critical replications can then compare plausible alternative explanations of the average unbiased causal effect and of individual differences in those effects. We conclude that this type of systematic sequencing of critical replications has more potential for making the kinds of discriminations typical of cumulative progress in science than do exact replications alone, especially in areas where randomized studies are unavailable.

Dynamic changes in parent affect and adolescent cardiac vagal regulation: a real-time analysis.

The current study explored the role of parents' negative and positive affect in adolescent respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity during a parent-adolescent conflict discussion task and the moderating effects of adolescent sex and age. Questionnaire data were collected from 206 adolescents (10-18 years of age; M = 13.37 years) and their primary caregivers (83.3% biological mothers). Electrocardiogram and respiration data were collected from adolescents, and RSA variables were computed. Parent affect was coded during the conflict discussion task. Multilevel modeling was used to distinguish the between- and within-individual effects of parent affect on adolescent RSA. Results indicated that observed within-parent-teen dyad anger was negatively associated with adolescent RSA, controlling for previous-minute RSA level, particularly among adolescents 13 years and older. In addition, observed between-dyad positive affect was positively linked to RSA for both boys and girls when previous-minute RSA level was controlled. Within-dyad positive affect was positively related to girl's RSA only. These findings suggest that expressions of positive affect may be related to better vagal regulation (RSA increases), whereas expressions of anger may be related to poor vagal regulation (RSA decreases) during social engagement.

Adolescent RSA responses during an anger discussion task: Relations to emotion regulation and adjustment.

The current study examined associations between adolescent respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during an angry event discussion task and adolescents' emotion regulation and adjustment. Data were collected from 206 adolescents (10-18 years of age, M age = 13.37). Electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiration data were collected from adolescents, and RSA values and respiration rates were computed. Adolescents reported on their own emotion regulation, prosocial behavior, and aggressive behavior. Multilevel latent growth modeling was employed to capture RSA responses across time (i.e., linear and quadratic changes; time course approach), and adolescent emotion regulation and adjustment variables were included in the model to test their links to RSA responses. Results indicated that high RSA baseline was associated with more adolescent prosocial behavior. A pattern of initial RSA decreases (RSA suppression) in response to angry event recall and subsequent RSA increases (RSA rebound) were related to better anger and sadness regulation and more prosocial behavior. However, RSA was not significantly linked to adolescent aggressive behavior. We also compared the time course approach with the conventional linear approach and found that the time course approach provided more meaningful and rich information. The implications of adaptive RSA change patterns are discussed.

The intervention selection bias: an underrecognized confound in intervention research.

Selection bias can be the most important threat to internal validity in intervention research, but is often insufficiently recognized and controlled. The bias is illustrated in research on parental interventions (punishment, homework assistance); medical interventions (hospitalization); and psychological interventions for suicide risk, sex offending, and juvenile delinquency. The intervention selection bias is most adequately controlled in randomized studies or strong quasi-experimental designs, although recent statistical innovations can enhance weaker designs. The most important points are to increase awareness of the intervention selection bias and to systematically evaluate plausible alternative explanations of data before making causal conclusions.

Ordinary physical punishment: is it harmful? Comment on Gershoff (2002).

E. T. Gershoff (2002) reviewed processes that might mediate and contexts that might moderate the associations between corporal punishment (CP) and child behaviors and provided an account of the methodological weaknesses of the research reviewed in her meta-analyses. In this examination of Gershoff, the authors argue that the biases and confounds in the meta-analyses further limit any causal inferences that can be drawn concerning the detrimental "effects" of CP on associated child behaviors. The authors suggest that undesirable child outcomes are associated with CP because the construct marks inept harsh parenting and conclude that although the harmful effects of physical abuse and other extreme punishments are clear, a blanket injunction against spanking is not justified by the evidence presented by Gershoff.

A comparison of clinical pediatric patient encounters in university medical center and community private practice settings.

BACKGROUND: Growing numbers of medical students complete clerkships in community private practice (CPP) settings instead of the more traditional university-based clinics, yet few empirical studies have evaluated how setting type impacts clinical experiences, skill development, and student satisfaction. OBJECTIVE: This study compared the pediatric patient encounters seen by third-year medical students in university medical center (UMC) and CPP settings. METHODS: Third-year medical students were required to keep a log of all patients seen during their 8-week pediatric clerkship. Logbook entries were coded and then analyzed for differences in the number and distribution of the primary diagnostic categories between settings. RESULTS: CPP students reported, on the average, seeing over 3 times more patients than UMC students. The case mix distribution also differed significantly by setting. In general, CPP students reported seeing proportionately more routine illnesses, whereas UMC students reported seeing proportionately more uncommon disorders. Because CPP students saw more patients overall, they averaged more cases in almost all diagnostic categories. CONCLUSION: CPP students received more clinical patient exposure than UMC students, except for patients in a few diagnostic categories.

Comparison of a computerized anesthesia device with a traditional syringe in preschool children.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the efficacy of a computerized injection device (Wand) on reducing pain behavior during injections with preschool-aged children. METHODS: Subjects consisted of 40 patients between the ages of 2 and 5 requiring local anesthesia for dental restorations in the maxilla. Patients were randomly assigned to either the Wand or the traditional anesthetic delivery system. A palatal approach to the anterior and middle superior alveolar nerves and the anterior superior alveolar nerve was used with the Wand injections. Buccal infiltration and palatal injections were used for the traditional method. Pain behavior was observed and coded. RESULTS: Results of Fisher Exact tests found that using the Wand to deliver anesthetic lead to significantly fewer (P < .01) disruptive behaviors in preschool-aged children when compared with a traditional injection regimen. In addition, none of the preschool-aged children exposed to the Wand required restraint during the initial interval, while nearly half of the children receiving a traditional injection required some type of immediate restraint. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that the Wand can significantly reduce disruptive behaviors in a population of young children who are traditionally more difficult to manage and may be one method of creating a more positive experience for the young child and the practitioner.