Changes in parents' spanking and reading as mechanisms for Head Start impacts on children.

This study examined whether Head Start, the nation's main two-generation program for low-income families, benefits children in part through positive changes in parents' use of spanking and reading to children. Data were drawn from the 3-year-old cohort of the national evaluation of the Head Start program known as the Head Start Impact Study (N = 2,063). Results indicated that Head Start had small, indirect effects on children's spelling ability at Age 4 and their aggression at Age 4 through an increase in parents' reading to their children. Taken together, the results suggest that parents play a role in sustaining positive benefits of the Head Start program for children's behavior and literacy skills, one that could be enhanced with a greater emphasis on parent involvement and education. (PsycINFO Database Record

The stability of elementary school contexts from kindergarten to third grade.

The nature and measurement of school contexts have been the foci of interest in community, developmental, and school psychology for decades. In this paper, we tested the stability of six elementary school-context factors over time, using a nationally representative and longitudinal sample of schools from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), and systems theories as a conceptual framework. Confirmatory factor analyses and tests of measurement equivalence revealed that six latent factors fit the data equally well across kindergarten, first grade, and third grade: school strain, school safety practices, school academic performance, school instructional resources, positive school climate, and school violence and crime. The factors were highly stable across the early elementary school years, with standardized stability coefficients ranging from .87 to .99 between kindergarten and first grade and from .71 to .98 between the first and third grades. Equivalence in the two sets of stability coefficients was also found across time. Both the magnitude and equivalence of the stability coefficients were robust to the inclusion of five key exogenous school characteristics as covariates in the model. Results suggest that elementary school contexts are remarkably stable over time and shed light on methodological considerations regarding the treatment of school-level measures in analyses that examine links between school context and children's academic and developmental trajectories.

Longitudinal links between spanking and children's externalizing behaviors in a national sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American families.

This study examined whether the longitudinal links between mothers' use of spanking and children's externalizing behaviors are moderated by family race/ethnicity, as would be predicted by cultural normativeness theory, once mean differences in frequency of use are controlled. A nationally representative sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American families (n = 11,044) was used to test a cross-lagged path model from 5 to 8 years old. While race/ethnic differences were observed in the frequency of spanking, no differences were found in the associations of spanking and externalizing over time: Early spanking predicted increases in children's externalizing while early child externalizing elicited more spanking over time across all race/ethnic groups.

Child effortful control as a mediator of parenting practices on externalizing behavior: evidence for a sex-differentiated pathway across the transition from preschool to school.

An explanatory model for children's development of disruptive behavior across the transition from preschool to school was tested. It was hypothesized that child effortful control would mediate the effects of parenting on children's externalizing behavior and that child sex would moderate these relations. Participants were 241 children (123 boys) and their parents and teachers. Three dimensions of parenting, warm responsiveness, induction, and corporal punishment, were assessed via maternal report when children were 3 years old. Child effortful control at age 3 was measured using laboratory tasks and a mother-report questionnaire. Mothers and teachers contributed ratings of child externalizing behavior at age 6. Results showed that the hypothesized model fit the data well and that the pattern of associations between constructs differed for boys and girls. For boys, parental warm responsiveness and corporal punishment had significant indirect effects on children's externalizing behavior three years later, mediated by child effortful control. Such relations were not observed for girls. These findings support a sex-differentiated pathway to externalizing behavior across the transition from preschool to school.