The Relationship Between Social Support and Student Academic Involvement: The Mediating Role of School Belonging.

Canada's high school graduation rates are still low when compared to other members of the OECD. Previous studies have found academic involvement is associated with positive trajectories toward graduation, that social support promotes student engagement, and that school belonging could mediate this relationship. Still, little is known about the specificity of such mediation, especially in Québec. Therefore, this study examined the role of belonging as mediator of the relationship between social support and academic involvement. Participants (N = 238) were high-school students from the Greater Montréal Area. All variables were measured by the School-Climate Questionnaire. Results from hierarchical multiple regressions indicated parental support had a direct relationship, whereas peer and teacher support had a mediated relationship by school belonging with academic involvement. Results highlight the critical role of school belonging in promoting academic involvement in relation to social support.

Development and Validation of the Teen Dating Aggression Measure Among Canadian Youth.

Teen dating violence (TDV) victimization is a traumatic experience that can have adverse consequences for adolescents. Current measures that assess TDV do not fully distinguish between psychological and relational forms of aggression, nor do they capture aggressive acts that are common within adolescent relationships. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Teen Dating Aggression Measure (TeDAM) using a sample of 730 Canadian adolescents (M = 15.88 years, SD = 1.23). The measure is an expansion of the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory and includes items that describe other forms of violence such as coercion and control, along with more traditional indicators of dating violence (e.g., sexual aggression). Factor analyses yielded three factors, namely psychological aggression, sexual and physical aggression, and relational aggression, which were correlated with more frequent cannabis and alcohol use as well as rape myth acceptance. These results provide initial support for the utility of the TeDAM for assessing TDV with adolescents.