The social contexts of behaviors and relationships: The relation of classroom and cyber victimization to number of classroom and cyber friends.

Behaviors and relationships exist within a variety of social contexts. More specifically for the current research, victimization and friendships occur in classrooms and, increasingly, in online virtual contexts. The current research examined how the number of classroom friends and number of cyber friends related to the extent of classroom victimization and extent of cyber victimization. Research has demonstrated the importance of face-to-face friendships in relation to being a victim; much less is known about the role of cyber friends in relation to being a cyber victim or how these relationships may play a role in cross-context victimization. Participants were 350 children from Grades 3 through 5 (188 girls and 162 boys). Children indicated classroom friends on a classroom roster, reported the number of their cyber friends, and indicated the extent of their cyber victimization. Peers nominated classmates for classroom victimization behaviors. A path analysis revealed that number of classroom friends was negatively associated with both extent of classroom victimization and extent of cyber victimization. Number of cyber friends was positively associated with extent of cyber victimization and was negatively related to extent of classroom victimization. Discussion of results includes the construction, use, and adaptation of social skills within and between social contexts.

"More Than Buying Extra Fruits and Veggies, Please Hide the Fats and Sugars": Children's Diet Latent Profiles and Family-Related Factors.

Promoting children's healthy diets is a key public health priority. Family can play a relevant role in children's eating patterns. The goals of the current research were to identify different latent diet profiles in children based on their food consumption and to assess the relationship between profiles and family-related factors. A total of 678 school-aged children from the fifth and sixth grades participated. The study design was cross-sectional and questionnaire based. Research assessed healthy (fruit and vegetables) and unhealthy (fast food, sugar-sweetened beverages, and candies) food consumption and family-related factors. A latent profile analysis and multivariate data analysis were developed. Four diet profiles were identified: Combined Diet, Mainly Healthy Diet, Mainly Unhealthy Diet, and Very Unhealthy Diet. Nearly half of the children (45.22%) showed a Combined Diet profile, meaning that they reported eating nearly the same amount of healthy and unhealthy types of foods. Associations between the diet profiles, family income, and food availability were found. For example, the Mainly Healthy Diet profile was statistically associated with a higher family income and less access to unhealthy foods. The present study reinforces the idea that profiling diets can allow for a tailored healthy eating intervention model according to the specific needs of each diet profile.

"Why can't you sit still?"The effect of daily physical activity on childhood inattention/hyperactivity and the educational gender gap.

Despite the compelling evidence of the long-run consequences of childhood inattention/hyperactivity and harmful side effects of stimulant medication, relatively little is known about accessible non-pharmacological options to reduce inattentive/hyperactive behaviours. This study evaluates the effect of daily exercise on inattentive/hyperactive behaviours among young children by leveraging evidence from a quasi-experiment generated when 3 Canadian provinces adopted mandatory requirements for all students in grades 1 through 6 to participate in 20-30 min of daily physical activity at school between 1994 and 2009. By exploiting plausibly exogenous variations in the timing of implementation and duration of physical activity mandated as well as over 20,000 observations on a sample of nationally representative children, our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that brief bouts of daily exercise at school effectively reduce inattention/hyperactivity in children - with the beneficial effect enhanced by the duration of exercise mandated. Importantly, most of the exercise effect is concentrated on boys. Since boys' higher rates of inattention/hyperactivity contribute to the explanation for boys' lagging academic motivation and achievement, we argue that providing more scope for physical activity during the school day might be a feasible policy option not only for reducing inattentive/hyperactive behaviours, but also for helping to close the educational gender gap in the longer run.

Emotional and Behavioral Health Needs in Elementary School Students in an Underserved Hispanic Community.

High rates of mental health problems in adolescents have been well documented; less is known about elementary school children in disadvantaged communities. We examined emotional and behavioral health needs in 202 third and fourth graders enrolled in a charter school in a largely Hispanic community. The child-reported Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-25 and Teacher's Report Form were used to evaluate mental health needs as perceived by these children and their teachers. The prevalence of teacher-reported depression and child self-reported anxiety was 7.0% and 6.67%, respectively. Living in a single parent household was found to be a specific risk factor in that those children had higher rates of emotional and behavioral problems than children living with both parents. Evidence of higher depression and anxiety identified in this sample compared to national representative data suggests the need for development of culturally sensitive early prevention and intervention in this underserved community.

Functional Movements in Japanese Mini-Basketball Players.

Functional movement screen (FMS) has been used to establish normative data and determine potential injury risk for young adults and athletes, but there are few data in elementary school-age children. The purpose of this study was to establish fundamental values for the FMS in elementary school-age mini-basketball players. Secondary purposes were to examine relationships between functional movement patterns and age, peak height velocity (PHV), and body mass index (BMI), and to compare functional movement patterns between boys and girls and between individuals with and without a history of injury. The mean composite FMS score was 16.5 ± 2.2 (16.5 ± 2.4 for boys, 16.5 ± 1.7 for girls). The composite FMS score was positively correlated with age (r = .312) and negatively correlated with the BMI (r = - .371). However, the FMS score was not correlated with PHV or with PHV age. The FMS score was not different between boys and girls or between individuals who reported a previous injury and those who did not. However, boys in the mini-basketball teams performed better than girls on the trunk stability push-up and rotary stability tests. Age and the body mass index were significantly associated with better and poorer functional movement, respectively.

Injuries in Japanese Junior Soccer Players During Games and Practices.

CONTEXT: Soccer is the most popular junior sport in the world. In junior sports, injury analysis and injury-prevention measures for players, especially those under 12 years of age, are urgently needed. OBJECTIVE: To prospectively study the incidence, sites, types, and mechanisms of injuries in elementary school-aged junior soccer players during games and practices. DESIGN: Descriptive epidemiology study. SETTING: Elementary school-aged junior soccer teams in Nagoya, Japan. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-nine players in 5 community-based club teams of junior soccer (U-12, age range = 11-12 years; U-11, age range = 10-11 years; U-10, age ≤10 years). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Data on all game and practice injuries for the 2013-2014 season were collected using an injury report form. Injury rates were calculated according to injury site, type, and mechanism. RESULTS: The overall injury rate was 2.59/1000 athlete-hours (AHs). The game injury rate (GIR; 6.43/1000 AHs) was higher than the practice injury rate (PIR; 1.49/1000 AHs; P < .05). The most common anatomical areas of injury during games and practices were the lower limbs (62.5% and 4.02/1000 AHs versus 38.5% and 0.57/1000 AHs, respectively). Contusions (27.6%, n = 8) were the most frequent type of overall injuries. Most game injuries resulted from body contact (43.8%, 2.81/1000 AHs), whereas most practice injuries resulted from other types of contact (53.8%, 0.83/1000 AHs). CONCLUSIONS: The GIRs were higher than the PIRs in Japanese junior soccer players. A lower overall PIR suggested that players in the U-12 age group practiced under appropriate conditions. However, the higher GIR in this age category needs to be decreased.

A microgeographic analysis of physical activity behavior within elementary school grounds.

PURPOSE: There is little scholarship on physical activity among children within outdoor spaces and work is needed to advance the design of these spaces from "best practices" towards evidence-based design. This project examined how playground feature density relates to children's physical activity. DESIGN: We used the System for Observing Play and Leisure Activity to observe children's physical activity. SETTING: We observed children during school recess on 24 school grounds in the Denver metropolitan area of Colorado, in spring of 2010 and 2011. SUBJECTS: A total of 31,069 observations were made from an estimated 9900 children aged 5 to 12. These were aggregated and analyzed in 397 playground zones. MEASURES: We examined utilization, the number of children present in a particular activity zone during an observation, and the percentage of children engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity as they relate to the density of constructed features on school playgrounds. ANALYSIS: Ordinary least-squares linear regression model assessed the relationship between playground feature density and the utilization and moderate to vigorous physical activity. RESULTS: Significant positive associations were observed between utilization and feature density among all children (ß = .20; p < .001) and a statistically significant but small association was observed between moderate to vigorous physical activity and feature density for girls (ß = .12; p = .013), but not for boys. CONCLUSION: This analysis contributes to evidence that design features of play spaces may influence children's behavior within school grounds.

Factores contextúales del desarrollo infantil y su relación con los estados de ansiedad y depresión / Contextúal factors of childhood development and its relation with anxiety and depression states

Esta investigación tiene por objeto identificar los factores contextuales relacionados con los estados de ansiedad y depresión en niños escolarizados, valorados por sus docentes según la observación del comportamiento del niño en diversos contextos. Se trabajó con 254 niños entre 6 y 11 años. Se aplicaron la Escala Multidimensional de la Conducta de Reynolds & Kamphaus (1992), que evalúa los problemas emocionales y de conducta. La Lista de Chequeo de Estresores (Jiménez & Castro, 2006), que incluye Ambiente Físico, Relaciones Sociales, Exigencias Académicas y Entrevista de Evaluación y Caracterización. El análisis de regresión multivariada muestra que el factor exigencia académica se asocia con la presencia de estados de ansiedad, así como con relaciones sociales y exigencias académicas a los estados de depresión en la población infantil. El análisis correlacional indica una relación moderada entre la ansiedad y la depresión.

This research aims to identify the contextual factors associated with states of anxiety and depression in children attending school, rated by their teachers according to the observation of the child's behavior in multiple contexts. The multidimensional behavioral scale of Reynolds & Kamphaus (1992) that evaluate emotional and behavioral problems was applied along with stressors checking list (Jimenez y Castro, 2006) including physical environment, social relationships, academic requirements, evaluation interview and characterization to 254 children in school age between 6 an 11 years. Multivariate regression analysis shows that requirement academic factor is associated with anxiety states as well as social relationships and requirement academic related to depression states in children. Correlational analysis indicates a moderate relation between anxiety and depression.